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PDOAH AND BETOp:
TIE CHRONICLE OF A LEISURELY JOURNEY
Tf^rouaf? i\)e Uplands of Viralnia and Tennessee,
SKETCHING THEIR SCENERY, NOTING THEIR LEGENDS,
PORTRAYING SOCIAL AND MATERIAL PROGRESS,
AND EXPLAINING ROUTES OF TRAVEL.
Ernest Ingersoll
With Illustrations by
Frank H. Taylor.
NEW YORK:
Leve & Alden Printing Company, 107 Liberty Street,
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGE
% I. — The Cumberland Valley, ...... 5
*
II. — In and About Hagerstown, 10
III. — Pen-Mar and Blue Mountain, 13
IV. — On the Western Maryland Railway, ... 16
V. — The Antietam and the Potomac, .... 19
'B VI. — The Lower Valley of the Shenandoah, . , 24
VII. — LURAY AND ITS CaVERNS 3^
VIII. — Up the South Fork, 42
IX. — Crab-tree Falls and the Natural Bridge, . . 47
X. — The New City of Roanoke, 56
XI. — Norfolk and Petersburg 69
XII. — In the Valley of the James. . ' . . . . 82
XIII. — Westward Bound, 88
XIV. — New River CAf5oN and Mountain Lake, . . 92
XV. — Through South-west Virginia, 98
XVI. — Roan Mountain and the Canons of Doe River, . ic2
XVII. — Through East Tennessee, 106
XVIII, — A Chapter Explanatory, . . . , . 113
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Baily gets the Facts,
Hag-erstown, .....
Hagerstown Station, ....
Evening on the Upper Potomac,
A Dot of a Cabin, ....
Virginia Uplands, ....
Between Front Royal and Luray,
Hall of the Giants, ....
Banks of the Rhine, " Luray Caverns,"
A Mountain Cascade,
Luray Inn, .....
Station and Restaurant at Luray, .
An "Interior" in the Inn at Luray, .
The Blue Bridge, near Waynesboro,
The Natural Bridge, ....
The Saltpetre Cave on Cedar Creek,
The Arbor Vitae Trees and Giants' Stairway,
James River Gorge, ....
Near Buchanan, .....
Crozier Iron Works, ....
A Mountain Rift near Roanoke,
Offices of the Consolidated Railways at Roanoke,
Big Spring, near Roanoke,
Hotel Roanoke, .....
Tinker and Mill Mountains, Roanoke,
Hotel Roanoke, . . , . • .
Lobby of the Hotel Roanoke, ,
The Market Square at Norfolk,
New Cotton Compressor at Norfolk, . . . .
Old Church at Norfolk, .....
Terminal Wharves at Lambert's Point, .
In Fortress Monroe, ......
Old Point Comfort, from Soldiers' Home,
Views from Dock Pavilion, Hotel Warwick,
Bowling Hall, Hotel Warwick, ....
Scene on Virginia Beach, .....
Hampton Roads, ......
New Station of the Norfolk & Western Railway at Norfolk,
A Suffolk Farm House, .....
Conoeing on the Dismal Swamp,
Footprints of War, . .
Tobacco Wagons at Lynchburg,
Negro Wagoners, ....
An Ebony Gabriel, ....
The Peaks of Otter,
The Roanoke, .....
New River Scenery,
The Maple Shade Inn, ....
On Doe River, ....
Along ihe Upper French Broad,
INDEX.
[See also Appendix.]
Abingdon,
Air Line,
Alabama cities, . . . .
Antietam, battle of the,
Appalachian Valley, the Great,
Appomatox station,
Asheville,
Atlanta,
laltimore and Ohio railway, .
battle of Antietam, — .
Buchanan, . . . .
Cross Keys, - .
Front Royal, ." . . .
Knoxville, ....
Pack-horse ford,
Port Republic, ^
South-west Virginia, 91, 93,
Waynesboro, ...
Berryville,
Blue Mountain house,
" Blue Mountain route,"
Blue Ridge,
Blue Ridge Springs,
Bluestone, .
Bristol, .
Buchanan, .
PAGE
lOI
9, 61
114
23, 24
6
83
108
115
23
Virginia,
Carlisle, .
Castle Cresap,
Cattle in South-west
Caverns of Luray,
C hambersburg.
Chapel, the "old,"
Charleston,
Chattanooga,
Chesapeake bay steamers,
Chesapeake & Ohio railroad, .
Christiansburg, . . . .
Cleveland,
Cloyd's mountain,
Corn-Exchange regiment.
Cotton traffic at Norfolk,
Crab-tree Falls,
Cranberry iron mines, .
Cripple Creek, ....
Cross Keys, . . . .
Crozier Steel and Iron Company,
Cumberland valley.
24
24
57
43
30
no
23
42
8, loi
46
26
i3i 14
115
25,45
87
91
lOI
56
64
31-42
9
26
24
112
6)
46
91
112
02
24
7^
47, 48
102
98
43
64
, 7, 15
Dismal Swamp,
Doe river,
PAGE
78
102
Elkton, 42, 44
East Tennessee, .... 103, no
East Tenn. & N. Carolina R'y, . 103
East Tennessee, Virginia & Geor-
gia R'y, 106, 112
Fairfax's estate, .... 27
Farmville, 82
Flat-top Coal mines, ... 91
Florida, 115
" Florida Short line," . . 115,116
Forks of the Shenandoah, . . 28
Fortress Monroe, . . • • 73
French Broad river, . . . 108
Front Royal, .... 29-31
Gettysburg 8
Greenville, 107, 109
Greenway court, .... 27
Grimes station, 20
Hagerstown, .... 10-12, 20
Hampton Roads, .... 76
Harewood House, .... 25
Harrisburg, 5,6
Hawksbill valley, .... 42
High Bridge, 82
Hotel Roanoke, .... 67
Hotel Warwick, . . . • 75, 76
Hunter's raiders, . . . . 58, 87
Hygeia hotel, 74
Indians, .
Iron -ore,
Jackson, Gen. Stonewall,
James river, .
Jellico,
. 10, 20, 23, 29
30, 44, 64, 98, lOI
21, 25, 42, 49
49, 56, 59i 83
109
Knoxville,
Lambert's Point,
Lexington,
Liberty,
Loch Laird,
Luray and its caverns,
history of,
Luray Inn,
Lynchburg,
109
72
49
86
49
33-40
41'
40
83,84
INDEX.
Maple Shade Inn,
Marble of Tennessee, .
Martins, ....
Massanutten mountain.
Max Meadows, .
Memphis,
Milnes station and forges,
Minerals of Blue Ridge,
Southwest Virginia,
Mobile, ....
Mountain-lake C' salt-pond "),
Natural Bridge,
New Orleans, . . . .
Newport News,
New river, ....
Norfolk, .....
Norfolk and Western railway.
Oakvale, . . . .
Ocean View, .
Old Point Comfort, .
Pack-horse ford,
Page valley,
Pamplin's depot, .
Peaks of Otter, .
Peanut culture in Virginia,
Pearisburg,
Pen-Mar,
Petersburg,
Pike, the national,
Pocahontas,
Port Republic,
Potomac river, .
Quirauk,
Railway, Cumberland Valley,
Railway routes southward, .
westward, . . . ,
Ramsay's steamboat,
Richmond and Alleghany railway,
Ringgold's Manor,
Riverton,
Roan mountain, ....
Roanoke, city of, . . .
machine works, .
valley, . . . . ,
PAGE
99
107
99
28 •
99
114
44
30. 42, 44
lOI
114
q6
49-56
114
76
91-97
69
61, 69
95
76
74
23
31
83
84, 87
72
92
13
80
II'
9i> 95
42
21, 22
14
• 5, 19
112, 114
114
21
49, 56
19
28
59-64
63
59
29,
i9i
PAGE
88
100
19
27
20
44
24
43, 46
26, 61
21-24
Salem, ....
Saltville, ....
St. James,
Saratoga house,
Sharpsburg,
Shenandoah Iron Works,
Junction,
river,
Valley Railroad,
Shepherdstown,
Sheridan-Rarly campaign, 25, 26, 30, 43, 46
Southern Fast Mail, .... 16
South Fork of Shenandoah, . 42-43
Spottswood and the " Golden Horse-
shoe," 43
Springs, Alleghany, ... 90
Bedford Alum, ... 87
Blue Ridge, ... 87
Eggleston's, . . ■' . . 93
Farmville Lithia, . . 83
New River White Sulphur, . 91
Red Sulphur, ... 88
South-west Virginia, . . 98
Warm, in N. Car., . . 109
White Sulphur, ... 91
Yellow Sulphur, . . 91,
Swamp, great dismal, ... 78
Tennessee river, . ... . no
Trout-fishing, 96
Valley of Virginia, ... 25
Virginia Beach, .... 77
Virginia Central railroad, . , 46
Virginia Midland crossing, . . 28
Virginia, southern, ... 80
Washington's explorations, . . 27
Washington, Ohio and Western rail-
way, '26
Waynesboro, 46
Junction, .... 45
Western Maryland railway, . . 13-19
Western. North Carolina, . . 105
White Post, 27
White Sulphur Springs, . . 45
Williams' Grove, .... 8
Wytheville, 99
TO THE
Shensndosh und Beyond.
I.
THE CUMBERLAND VALLEY.
A Railway Centre. — Astonishing- Business of Harrisburg Station. — -Esthetic and
Antiquarian Attractions at Harrisburg. — The " Appalachian Valley." —
Williams' Grove.— Carlisle and its Schools. — Snugness and Prosperity
of the Towns. — Fertility and High Cultivation of the Soil. —
Chambersburg and its History. — Gettysburg
Battlefield.— Maryland.
.llSilSii^' •)!
LTHOUGH a fairly well-informed
young person, Prue sometimes asks
very singular questions. An exam-
ple occurred this very morning.
We were waiting beside a little
heap of valises and rolls of wrap-
pings in the railway station at Har-
risburg, Pennsylvania, when Prue,
turning questioning eyes up to mine
— very pretty eyes they are, too, I
think — remarked :
"Theodore, what is meant by
the phrase 'a railroad centre ?' "
" Eh ? — why — this is one : A point where various lines of railways
converge and concentrate their forces."
" How is Harrisburg an example?"
"Well, it is a sort of half-way house on the great Pennsylvania
Road east and west, and the place where its principal branch, the Phila-
delphia and Erie, diverges. Here crosses, also, the north and south
trunk route connecting Baltimore and Washington with all the cities of
western New York state and the Canadas. This is the end of the
Philadelphia and Reading, and, finally, it is the gateway of the South,
since here begins the Cumberland Valley Railroad, by which we are to
begin our travels through the Southern mountains. You could hardly
find a spot in the eastern and middle states where the straightest prac-
ticable course to the chief southern cities would not lead through Harris-
burg ; or, for persons going northward, one where they could find more
conveniences for reaching their diverse destinations. Now do you see
why it is called a railway centre ? "
6
" Indeed I do. What a busy place this station must be, for all the
trains seem to come into this one building."
"Yes, I daresay — Oh, Baily, suppose you go and ask the station-
master how many trains go and come here each day."
" Er — I was just going to — — "
"No matter about it, now, whatever it was, but just go along, like
a good fellow."
Prue was the last speaker, and was irresistible. Baily went. I knew
he would. We had asked him, an idler, to come with us, because he
had so obliging a disposition. I felt rather mean about it, for I knew
how he would be imposed upon, but Prue
declared he liked it, and I let her take the
responsibility.
Presently Baily came back, flourishing a
large Russia-bound, gilt-edged memorandum-
book, opened at the first page.
" Couldn't remember it all without notes,"
he ejaculated, and began to read statistics.
" Stop ! stop !" I cried after a short siege
of this, while Prue stood aghast at the figures
she had summoned to arise before her — sta-
tistical ghosts that "could not belaid" — be-
cause, you know, figures will not lie. " Stop !
Isn't there any general result? What is the
sum?"
" Oh, yes," Baily answered with unfailing
cheerfulness, "about seventy-eight passenger
trains go through the station every twenty-
four hours, and each has seven or eight cars ;
while the innumerable freight trains bring
nearly 3,000 cars more a day into this yard. When I add that a hun-
dred men are employed in station duties I am done," and the Russia
book was closed gently.
It was just in time. The Cumberland Valley train was ready for
us, and a few moments later our jolly tour down the long Appalachian
valleys, which stretch from here to Georgia, had begun.
Harrisburg was worth a longer stop than our arrangements allowed.
It is a beautiful old city, with a great deal to interest the visitor. The
central show-place, of course, is the state" capitol. set upon a hill in the
midst of a highly-cultivated park. Though of brick, and according to a
style now out of vogue, it is a dignified and commodious building. Near
it is the fine Corinthian shaft, bearing a noble figure, which com-
memorates the dead soldiers of the Mexican war. It is surrounded by
a fence of real muskets and captured cannon, and is one of the most
satisfactory monuments of its character in the United States. Only a
square away stands the granite obelisk, unadorned, which speaks
Pennsylvania's gratitude to her defenders during the late'war. The
BAILY GETS THE FACTS.
antiquarian and lover of history will probably find more valued and
inspiring relics of Colonial and Revolutionary times stored in the public
library at Harrisburg than in any other state house in the country ;
while many valuable paintings adorn its alcoves.
Harrisburg is wealthy and aristocratic, as its homes testify. We
get a glimpse of the exterior of a group of the best of these as the train
moves out upon the bridge to cross the Susquehanna. A long street
fronts the river, with square after square of noble houses and charming
gardens. Their outlook is unobstructed, for between the street and the
brink of the river-bluff runs only a narrow park.
The river is more than half a mile broad here, shallow and rocky.
Forster's island divides it — an island of market-gardens. Our bridge
must be nearly a hundred feet above the water, and from it an exceed-
ingly beautiful view is presented, with the warped ana mossy old
covered bridge, built for wagon traffic in 1812, as a picturesque feature
in the foreground.
Having crossed to the southern bank of the Susquehanna, we are at
once among rural scenes. Here begins the broad expanse between the
Blue Ridge or South Mountain, and the front rank of the Alleghanian
ranges, called the North Mountain. So much of this expanse as lies in
Pennsylvania and Maryland is called the Cumberland (County) Valley,
and its principal stream is the Conedegwinit.
" It is a splendid series of such valleys that we are to traverse," I
say to my companions. " Always on our left, and southeast of us, the
chain of the Blue Ridge; always on the right hand and northward, the
bold front of the Alleghanies. Sometimes, as here, these ranges will be
thirty miles apart. Sometimes they will come close together. Below
this valley lies that of the Shenandoah. Beyond that the basin of the
Roanoke, and so on. Sometimes we shall turn aside into the mountains
themselves, or stop to rest beneath their shadow."
" What a lovely time wc are to have ! " exclaimed Prue delightedly,
and tucked her hand in sign of gratitude within my arm; that was reward
enough for anybody.
Meanwhile we were out among the farms — forests of maize, the
tassels and flag-like leaves nodding and snapping under the breeze raised
by our swift passing; yellow spaces of stubble, where acres upon acres
of grain have stood; blossoming squares of clover; wide meadows of
pasture and hay; emerald fields of tobacco.
Though in so high a state of cultivation, there was a fair proportion
of woodland, and trees of great size grew in the fence corners and about
the houses. One might consider these relics of the primeval forest,
but none of them were older than the settlements, for when the whites
first came to this region, " the whole extent of country between the
South and Blue mountains, from the western bank of the Susquehanna
to Carlisle, was without timber."
Everything looked prosperous. Not a hovel was to be seen — not
even a poor, untidy little cabin on some bare knoll. Every house seemed
to be a homestead which had descended from the fathers, as, in perhaps
the majority of cases, was really the fact. Two or three villages flitted
by, and a junction, whence, Baily informed us, a branch line led to
Williams' Grove.
" What is that ! "
" A sequestered and sylvan retreat beside a murmuring stream, or
something of that sort," says Bailey, "where the National Grange has
held an annual assemblage for so many years that it has now become
perennial. It is a sort of vast picnic, camp-meeting, agricultural fair
and political mass meeting, all mixed into one, and a hundred' thou-
sand persons visit it every year. There's a heap o' fun to be had there
among the grangers and their girls ! " exclaims the volatile Baily.
A little later we came to another junction. Our glib companion did
not stop — he simply changed his subject.
" That's the line to Gettysburg — only an hour's ride. Mighty pretty
country, and lots of people run down there to see the famous battle-
ground, and to kick up the dust searching for bullets."
Off to the right and ahead of the junction, a lot of low white build-
ing's, in the midst of wide and highly cultivated farm lands, next
attracted attention.
"Hello!" was his remark, "There's the government school for
Indian children."
"Ah, yes; I read a long article describing it in Harper s Magazine
for April, 1881. P'our or five hundred boys and girls are gathered there
from all sorts of tribes and every part of the country where the red man
now remains, and are turned out good farmers, craftsmen and house-
keepers, to become teachers and exemplars to their own people. This
town we are entering, must therefore be Carlisle."
Carlisle it is — one of the oldest settlements in the region. The
railway runs right along the middle of the principal street, where the
best houses, the public buildings and the finest stores are situated. Thus
one gets quite as good an idea of the neat Utile city as if he rode about
it for a week. Rooms in an ordinary building serve as station offices,
and passengers alight from the train almost upon the sidewalk in front
of the principal hotels — a home-like welcoming arrangement, giving a
pleasant impression.
Just beyond the stopping-place, on the right, stand the spacious
grounds and buildings of Dickinson College, where from 100 to 150
students gather annually. One of its early professors has become a very
famous man — Spencer F. Baird, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution
and United States Commissioner of Fisheries.
Beyond Carlisle the country became more rolling and better
wooded. Wide areas of clover appeared, and the roadsides were richly
blue for a little way with an aster-like blossom in the greatest profusion,
beside which grew the sulphur-yellow heads of toad-flax. Enormous
corn fields undulated over the knolls, and nowhere was there to be seen a
particle of swampy, or stony or waste land. Every rod paid toll in
9
produce or pasturage, timber or fuel, to the thrifty husbandmen. The
very towns, Newville, Shippensburg, Chambersburg (a large, active
place, with a good deal of manufacturing), Greencastle, and the smaller
ones between, all betray the same feeling. They are compact and well-
kempt. The houses stand in blocks and are set flush upon the street.
Each shines with neatness and clean paint, and in the little garden
behind you can hardly walk for the trees, bushes and vines bearing fruit,
or the vegetables, set as thickly as they will grow. Land is very valu-
able, and must not be wasted.
These villages and the rich farms were an object of great long-
ing to the Confederate captains whose forces lay so short a distance
southward, and especially to the cavalry champions of the Shenandoah
valley. During the early part of the great civil conflict, whose blood-
iest battlefields we are destined to see, the Union line of defense along
the Potomac was too strong to make feasible any raiding northward
of that river ; but at the end of July, 1864, when Early was making so
strong a demonstration on the lower Shenandoah, and before the
cavalry army of Sheridan had been formed to check and ultimately to
defeat him, more than one rebel raid was executed into this region.
The most extensive and dreadful of all these descents was
McCausland's celebrated cavalry dash, wherein he passed behind the Union
lines at Hagerstown, and suddenly appeared in Chambersburg, with a
demand for $100,000 in gold instantly as a ransom, failing which he
would burn the town. It was impossible to pay the ransom, and the
town was defenceless. A few moments, therefore, saw the torch applied.
Meanwhile detachments had gone northward even as far as Carlisle,
and they will show you there two or three marks of its brief bombard-
ment ; but a large Union force going quickly after the raiders, they
retreated westward out of the valley, doing such harm as was possible
in their flight. In one respect this great fire was a blessing to the
burned town, for from its ashes rose a new city far superior in appear-
ance and conveniences.
Near Chambersburg branch railways diverge to Waynesboro, and to
Loudon, Richmond and Mercersburg. The main line continues to
Martinsburg on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, but its practical
terminus is at Hagerstown, Maryland. Here terminates, also, the
Western Maryland Railway, going to Baltimore ; and the Shenandoah
Valley road stretching southward as the second link of that great
Virginia, Tennessee and Georgia Air Line system, which is better
known as " The Shenandoah Route."
10
II.
IN AND ABOUT HAGERSTOWN.
Traditions of Early Settlements in Western Maryland. — Fort Cresap.— Founding
Hagerstown.— Extraordinary Fertility of the Antietam Valley.— The
National Pike. — "Public Tuesday." — Picturesque Peculiarities. —
War History of the Neighborhood.
Though Hagerstown is in Maryland, and a young lady there was
offended when I mentioned what I am about to say, our feeling was,
that we had not yet left Pennsylvania. This is due to the fact that the
earliest settlers, like the pioneers into the valley of the Susquehanna,
were Germans ; and they brought with them a certain method and
architecture which stamp their settlements, irrespective of state lines,
all the way from the Delaware to the Potomac.
It was early in the last century when Europeans first invaded this
smiling valley of the Antietam. Tradition says the earliest one of all
was that John Howard, who is credited with being the first white man
to see the Ohio, and who went thither by this route. Then came and
settled here a group of hardy frontiersmen, of whom Thomas Cresap
became famous as an Indian fighter in a community always at war with
the " red varmints," — Shawnees, Catawbas or Delawares. The central
settlement was at Long Meadows, about three miles from Hagerstown,
where a fort of logs and stone was built.
" That was Castle Cresap, was it not? " Asks Prue, whose interest
in history never flags.
"The same," I reply. In 1730 there came to the district, from
Germany, a Captain Hager, who made a home a mile east of Castle
Cresap, which he labeled Hager's Delight. He must have been a man
of more than ordinary abilities, I think, since he had previously
received a patent for lands now within the city of Philadelphia.
Hager's first home was on the Antietam, and was a building of logs
having an arched cellar of stone, to which the family would retire
whenever they were attacked by Indians.
By 1762 there were people enough in the neighborhood to suggest
to Hager the idea of having a town-centre. So he laid off streets
across a piece of swampy poor land, and called the plot Elizabeth-
town, after his wife.
" It seems to have been an unusually good class of immigrants
who came in here," Prue remarks (Baily has gone to sleep), "for I
. remember reading many a stirring incident of Revolutionary story
in which these people had a part."
By the beginning of the present century, Elizabeth Hager's Town, or
simply Hagerstown, as it was beginning to be called, had become an
important centre. The valley was noted for its great crops. There
were fifty grist mills in the neighborhood, three iron mines, and half a
dozen furnaces and forges, where pig-iron was cast and bars and hollow-
ware were made. Markets, churches and substantial houses of brick or
11
stone, many of which remain, had built up the town, whither nearly all
the business came, and about which the first macadamized roads in
America had been laid down. Large plantations had been organized by
slave labor, and civilization was radiating farther and farther into the
mountains.
Some outlet was required ; better means of getting products out to the
seaboard and merchandise in ; improved routes of communication with
the seaboard. To fill this want the National Pike was begun. Properly
speaking, the Pike ran from Cumberland to Wheeling, since only that
part of it was built by the Federal government ; the part from Cumber-
land to Baltimore having been constructed under law by certain Mary-
land banks, which found its toils a source of great profit. Its glory has
departed, but when coaching days were palmy no other post road in the
country did an equal business. "The wagons were so numerous," says
Howard Pyle, in an article upon it {Harper s Magazine, November, 1S79),
" that the leaders of one team had their noses in the trough at the end of
the next wagon ahead, and the coaches drawn by four or six horses
dashed along at a speed of which a modern limited express might not
feel ashamed."
Many are the good stories which cluster about this portion of that
busy highway! Hagerstown has now about 8,500 people, less than
five hundred of which are foreign born. If you go there on a Tuesday,
HAGEKSTOVVN.
however, you will think the whole 35,000 in Washington county have
come to town. Public Tuesday is an old custom, begun by accident,
but now crystallized into a rule of life in that region. It is on that day
that courts of record are open ; that every business man tries to be at
home and every countryman makes his errand to town. That is the
time of tax-sales, auctions, hucksterings, cheap shows and everything
that seeks a crowd.
13
Hagerstown is picturesque, well-built and prosperous, with a strong
tendency toward manufacturing. From its homes on the hill, where
Prospect street asserts its superiority, a wonderfully pleasing picture is
presented. The town, with its quaint old houses, many of them of log,
more of brick, old-fashioned and embowered in foliage, forms a pretty
foreground for the wide space of valley which stretches away to the
mountains circling about, in one blue, continuous wall.
Prue found good friends there — where doesn't she ? and one even-
ing we sat upon a certain rear porch, eating grapes and talking over the
great war-drama enacted in that valley between North and South only a
HAGERSTOWN STATION.
score of years ago. Our host and hostess had seen it all, and the story
seemed very real when they could point out each spot and say, " Here,
on that hill," or "there, where you see those trees," such and such a
scene occurred. The town was seldom, if ever, free from military occu-
pation from beginning to end. Its strategic importance was not great,
however, and it was held alternately by northern and southern com-
manders who had designs elsewhere. Lee's great movement northward
toward Gettysburg, and his masterly retreat therefrom, gave to Hagers-
town its greatest war incident ; but it must not be forgotten that
Antietam also was fought within sight and hearing of the village.
13
III.
PEN-MAR AND BLUE MOUNTAIN.
Baily's noble Self-sacrifice.— How Prue and I ran a Gauntlet.— A Shady Walk to Pen-
Mar. — Picnic Arrangements. — Carriages. — Dancing. — The Blue
Mountain House.— Mc. Quirauk and High Rock. —
Seventy-five Miles at a Glance.
One evening we left Hagerstovvn and went out to spend a day at the
Blue Mountain House and Pen-Mar, twenty miles away on the line of
the Western Maryland Railroad. The former is a fashionable summer
hotel, but Pen-Mar is a great picnic "resort" or pleasure-ground, to
which every day of the warm part of the year gather excursions from
surrounding towns, but chiefly from Baltimore and its neighborhood.
Every few days there arises some occasion when two or three thousand
pleasure-seekers gather by special trains and overrun the place. Gen-
erally the grounds are nearly deserted by sunset ; but now and then an
excursion party remains merry-making through the evening.
There were to be some "doings " of this sort that night, and they
promised to be worth seeing, while there would be opportunity for Prue
to dance to her heart's content, that is, if she were willing to dance with
me, since she knew nobody else.
" But there was Baily," you will say to yourself.
Yes, but I told Baily that he couldn't stop, but must go on to Balti-
more and come back next morning. Somebody had to. The Western
Maryland Railroad must be inspected. Self-sacrifice, always admirable,
had to be made, and I nobly said Baily should make it. It is not in me
to rob a man of a chance for glory.
So Baily went on, while we stopped at the Blue Mountain House,
toiling up the long hill from the station to the breezy heights the house
stands upon, running the gauntlet of the curious staring of two or three
hundred visitors in holiday dress, who filled the veranda and hallways,
and finally reaching our room with much the feeling of a kitten astray at
a dog show. But when we had washed our faces and brushed our hair,
and Prue had put on that- soft, cream-white dress, in which her sweet-
ness is shown to best advantage, then — why then, you know, we were
two of the dogs — a part of the show — and didn't mind the inquisitive
crowd at all.
After tea, we walked half a mile or so through the woods along a
smooth and winding path to Pen-Mar. Here the Western Maryland
railway, a few years ago, bought an extensive tract of woodland near the
top of the South mountain, where their road passes over (or through) it.
This is just upon the line between the states of Pennsylvania and Mary-
land, and the first syllables of each give the combination, which I took
to be some strange Cornish or Welsh word, until it was explained.
"I wonder," said that incorrigible Baily, when he heard of it, "why
they didn't choose the first and last syllables instead, and so produce
Maria ? "
14
That's about the size of his taste !
We found a broad and tolerably level area of mountain side from
which enough trees and underbrush had been cleared away to give place
for roads and buildings, and to allow an outlook. Many small tables
and benches were scattered about, where family groups had spread their
luncheon. For those who did not bring baskets a large dining hall
offered an excellent meal at fifty cents, and at several booths fruit and
cooling drinks (but no intoxicants) could be bought. For the little ones
swings, whirligigs, a short gravity railway, shooting galleries, bowling
alleys and the like were provided at the smallest fees, and two or three
photographers flourished by a trade in " tin types."
The finely constructed roads were noisy with carriages, and public
hacks carried parties to the top of the mountain and back for ten or fif-
teen cents a fare. As it was moonlight the hacks were busy even now ;
but the main evening-attraction was the large covered dancing floor,
open on all sides save where the musicians sat.
It was well toward midnight when the whistles called the merry-
makers to the last train. Prue said she was glad she was not one of
them, but instead might walk pleasantly homeward through the fra-
grant woods and the glancing moonlight.
The Blue Mountain House is much like many another great summer-
season caravansary. It was erected by the Blue Ridge Hotel Company,
in 1883, and as it "filled a long-felt want for a first- class resort, within
easy reach of Baltimore, Washington and Philadelphia," it was necessary
to greatly enlarge it before the opening of the season of 1884. The
capacity of the hotel is now 400 guests. The building is splendidly fur-
nished throughout, has large rooms, en suite and single, with all modern
conveniences, "special regard being paid to the safety, comfort and
health of its guests." Sanitary arrangements are carefully planned and
constructed; there is soft mountain spring water in abundance, and the
premises are lighted by gas. In front of the hotel is an extensive lawn,
handsomely laid out and planted with young trees, which some day will
grow to be very charming no doubt. Meanwhile there is nothing to
obstruct the outlook from the front piazzas across the gnarled tops of the
pines at the foot of the lawn, to the wide expanse of the Cumberland
valley and the far blue wall of the North mountain.
A pleasant walk of half a mile or so up the mountain brings you to
where a rocky crag, called High Rock, rears its head above the forest, and
here the proprietors have built an observatory three or four stories in
height, where a hundred people at once may sit with the western world
at their feet. The crest of the mountain, however, is several hundreds
of feet higher and reached by a winding road. On the summit, where
the mountain drops steeply away on each side from a narrow ridge, a
tower has been built which far overtops the tallest trees.
This is Mount Quirauk (pronounced Quirr-owk), and from it the
observer looks both ways and up and down the range. He sees how the
Blue Ridge, here, as elsewhere, is really in two lines or double, the more
15
western part being the higher and more continuous. Just here there is a
breaking down of the continuity, the depression forming a broad gap,
which during the late war was carefully guarded by Federal troops in
protection of lower Maryland. The bottom of this gap is cultivated, but
elsewhere the mountain is covered with forest.
We stand upon the western summit, here at Quirauk, and looking
eastward can distinguish to-day only the misty, prairie-like expanse of
central Maryland; but when the air is exceptionally clear, one can detect
the shimmer of Chesapeake bay.
Turning our eyes westward and northward, a sharp and varied pic-
ture is spread before us under the warm sunlight. On the horizon, so
far away as to be vaguely enchanting, lie the folds of Appalachia, rank
behind rank. Studying them we can see how the Little North mountain
and the Great North mountain overlap ; can pick out certain peaks, and
find where " gaps" go through; while southward, just at the end of the
picture, are the varied headlands at Harper's Ferry. It is seventy-five
miles from one end of that line of mountains to the other !
And what between? The great smooth plain of the Potomac, known
on this side as the Cumberland, and beyond as the Shenandoah valley.
It is nowhere perfectly fiat, yet nowhere elevated into hills. It is divided
into innumerable fields and patches of woodland, whose long-settled
boundaries are marked by lines of full-grown trees or by luxuriant
hedge-rows, as in a well-ordered park. The varied crops grown— green
grass, dull clover, golden stubble, with the warm red-brown of the plowed
land and the graceful interference of groves, make an irregular mosaic
very pleasant to look upon. In the centre of each cluster of fields stands
a white farm-house with its shade trees, its huge barns and surrounding
orchards. Here and there, where we can trace the white threads of roads
crossing, will be seen a group of such houses and the steeple of a church.
At wider intervals, a village with compact masses of brick, and the
smoke of factories to distinguish it. Waynesboro, the largest of these,
is close at hand, and its great factories for the making of agricultural
machinery are in plain view. Hagerstown, twenty miles away, becomes
a cluster of spires. The scene is one of agricultural thrift and prosperity,
which it would be hard to parallel. Nowhere is there a bit of waste land,
nowhere a mean farm or miserable shanty. Everywhere industry and cul-
tivation and general content. No worse shadows lie upon it than those the
drifting clouds throw picturesquely down, and the winds as quickly snatch
awav. , .
^
16
IV.
ON THE WESTERN MARYLAND RAILWAY.
The Fast Mail. — Baily wants to go a-fishing. — Rushing through a Farmer's Para-
dise.— Pretty Girl at Westminster. — Prue is Shoclced. — Another Pretty
Girl. — Mountains in Line of Battle. — Trout-brooks and Artists'
Foregrounds.— Enthusiasm Justified.
Baily telegraphed me that he would be back on a train passing
Pen-Mar in the early evening, and we resolved to go forward at the
same hour. The poor fellow was aghast when he saw us at the station ;
but I pointed out to him that there was need to make haste, as it really
was of no importance to the world that he should stop at the big hotel
or dance with some pretty girl at the picnic grounds. So he lugged his
valise back into the car, and we sped away down the hill toward Hagers-
tovvn.
" Now," said Prue, kindly wishing to comfort him, " I've no doubt
you had a charming trip — tell us all about it."
"Well, I was too vexed at going to take much notice, except that
we slid down the long hill with most amazing speed, and then, before I
knew it, the mountains were out of sight, and we had rattled through a
lot of towns without as much as saying ' By your leave ! ' and there we
were in Baltimore."
" That was the fast mail, my boy. It gathers itself together from
Memphis and New Orleans and Atlanta, and all the rest of the far
South, at Cleveland, Tennessee, and comes through by the way of the
Norfolk and Western, Shenandoah Valley and Western Maryland rail-
ways, to Baltimore and Washington in the quickest time ever made on
southern railroads."
" I dare say that was the train I returned on."
" No, this is the ' Memphis Express,' but it also is a fast train."
"Fast? Why we shot out of those tunnels from the Union Station,
in Baltimore, on Charles street, where all the Northern Central
and Pennsylvania trains come and go to New York and Washington,
as though we had been fired from a gun ! Then in a minute or
two we were scooting along the banks of a little stream which rippled
gayly across a pretty meadow, dodging here and there through
thickets, in and out of little pools, under foot bridges and over stone
barriers, and I wanted to get out and go a-fishing."
" Why didn't you?"
"Circumstances opposed. First, I hadn't a rod; second, hadn't a
hook ; third, hadn't any bait ; fourth, no fish there — too near town ;
fifth, we were running so dam — "
" Oh ! " cried Prue in a shocked tone.
" — agingly fast," continued Baily entirely unmoved by her interjec-
tion, " that before I could fairly think about it, we had leaped the brook
and were racing past orchards red with apples, and fields gray with
the stubble of wheat and noisy with the sound of threshers, and
17
every few miles there would be a banging of switches and a rushing
by a small station, all the houses of which seemed to rock and dance
before our eyes as though a first-class earthquake had put its shoulder
under 'em. Then came a big bang and we stopped at Westminster.
I tell you it's a pretty country round there ! I don't wonder Johnny Reb
thought he was in clover when he raided up through Maryland. But we
could spare only a minute for Westminster — never saw anybody in
such a hurry as was that conductor ! There was an awfully pretty girl
at the next station, and I spoke to her, and was going to get acquainted,
and in a minute more would have kissed her good-by I'm sure — "
" Baily ! " says my wife severely.
*'0h, I didn't, Mrs. Prue — really I didn't you know! But before
I'd got my lips unpuckered we were where I wanted to go fishing again
— and I'd a caught something there, I'm sure. Sometimes this stream
would go dashing down little cataracts, and then it would slide along
weedy shallows under the willow and sycamore trees, where cattle were
standing knee deep in the cool clean current. Paths led up to pleasant
farmhouses, and here and there the dammed river — "
'' Afr. Baily," Prue breaks in, "is it necessary that you use
profane language ? "
" Eh ? Why I was only saying that dams here and there had raised
the water into pretty lakes where an old mill-wheel would be lazily
turning and boats were floating, and the summer sky was mirrored blue
and still. I came near jumping off. Just think of it ! Fishing,
swimming and boating, all close by, and I not in it !
" Pretty soon we came to Frederick Junction, where anybody that
wanted to could change cars for Frederick, and a lot of other places
north and south. The other road ran beneath ours and a young lady
got off here, and I was going to help her down the stairs ; but just as
I was making the arrangement nicely, our train started and I nearly got
left."
"That would have been rough," I remarked. "But likely you
would have ' got left ' in any case."
" N-no," Baily responded slowly, " I'm almost sorry I didn't stick
by her. However, there wasn't much time to cry over it. I could see
the mountains plainly ahead now — a long wall of 'em and they marched
right toward us in line of battle and kept rising higher and higher, while
green foot-hills and pretty glens, holding the gay little river, and
magnificent farms, flitted past in a swift panorama as though they were
all fleeing pell-mell before the advance of the great Blue Ridge.
'T wasn't really so, you know," Baily explained, "but it looked so
because we were going ahead like the dev — "
Prue sprang to her feet and looked daggers at the excited narrator.
I held up my hand and tried to stop his lips, but the effort was too late.
Out it came in Baily's full power of voice : " — devotees of the race-
course ; and in less than no time we were slap into the mountains,
twisting around curves and corners so fast, I thought the engineer was
18
playing 'crack the whip' with us. Then I ^/^ want to go a-fishing !
Here we were a-calawhooping along a sort of shelf or balcony at the
side of a deep ravine, and down at the bottom flowed the most beautiful
torrent, dashing and splashing and having a right good time under the
trees and among the boulders. I could see pools where I knew the
irout must be lying, and nobody there to disturb 'em, and I tell you I
did want to go a-fishing! "
" I don't doubt it ! Was the place a pretty one — good for an artist
as well as an angler ? "
" Pretty? Why, man, old Sonntag himself couldn't ask for abetter
place to sit and paint ! The mountain is cleft by a great irregular gap
down which comes this bounding stream. It is wooded everywhere with
the most varied and abundant foliage. You look away down into its
narrow cliff-walled gorge, and away up to dim heights on the other side,
and every little while you can see out beyond, across the Maryland low-
lands, where the sunlight is filling the whole world with color and light
and cheerfulness. When you have been up that Western Maryland Rail-
road once, you will resolve that it sha'nt be the last time."
Well, Baily was enthusiastic and talked fast, but he didn't over-
praise the comfort and delight of travel by that fine railroad which brings
to our southern trunk-line the fast mail from the north, and carries the
greater part of the passengers from Baltimore and Washington to the
mountain summer resorts, and to the south and southwest.
Its through trains not only come into the depot of the Shenandoah
Valley at Hagerstown, instead of into their own, but its coaches run
"through" between Roanoke and Baltimore.
19
V.
THE ANTIETAM AND THE POTOMAC.
Prue Criticises the Author.— Dutch Barns —Ringgold's Manor. — Indian War-paths.—
Battlefield of the Antietam.— Lee's Head-quarters.— The Potomac Surprises us.
— Shepherdstown. — Recollections of the Bucktails. — Ramsay's
Steamboat. — Pack-horse Ford and the Slaughter of the
Corn E.Kchange Regiment.
It was a charmingly bright morning when we bade Hagerstown
good bye, and toolc our places in the train on the Shenandoah Valley
Railway bound southward. Passengers had come in on the Western
Maryland Railway, and others on the Cumberland Valley, and now
appeared after their breakfast at the station with smiling faces. Com-
parisons are odious, but a better meal than one gets at the railway
restaurant in Hagerstown is unnecessary to either health or comfort.
" That's a point you're forever thinking about," says Prue, a little
spitefully.
*'Iam, I acknowledge. It's of immense importance. Why is it I
always prefer the Santa Fe route across the plains ? Because I am sure
of good meals. When one is traveling in the West or South, that con-
sideration is doubly worth forethought. The certainty of finding well-
cooked and abundant food was one great reason for my choosing this
route for our present trip."
" Well, I wouldn't be so particular."
"Why not? It's largely your fault if I am."
"How, pray tell?"
" Because you have educated me to so good living at home ! "
That softens the critic. Prue is justly proud of her tidy and accurate
house-keeping.
The face of the country roughens somewhat south of Hagerstown,
and a gradual but decided change in the appearance of things is notice-
able. The special feature of the German farming region is preserved
everywhere, however, north of the Potomac — I mean the huge barns.
While the houses are generally comfortable and sometimes large, they
are inconspicuous in the landscape beside the barns, which are magnifi-
cent— no simpler adjective will answer. They are not quite so big as
Chicago elevators, but far more spacious than most churches. A few
are built of wood upon a stone substructure which serves as a stable ; but
the majority are of stone with wooden sheds attached. The stone barns,
having long slits of windows left for ventilation, resemble forts pierced
for musketry ; while a few new barns made of brick, secure the needful
air by leaving holes, each the size of one brick, arranged in fantastic
patterns up and down the gable ends.
The first stop out of Hagerstown is at St. James, a district full of
reminiscence which Prue calls to mind at the sight of a group of buildings
on the right alittle beyond the station. This was " Ringgold's Manor,"
and Prue tells the story as we pass through the lands once under his sway.
20
Among the earliest settlers of this part of Maryland were the Ring-
golds, whose estates amounted to 17,000 acres in one spot here, and
much land elsewhere. The manor-house was at Fountain Rock, and
was a splendid mansion decorated with stucco-work and carvings exe-
cuted in good taste. " Many of the doors of the mansion," Prue
recounts, " were of solid mahogany, and the outbuildings, appointments,
etc., were of the handsomest character. The architect was the dis-
tinguished Benjamin H. Latrobe, who was also one of the architects of
the national capitol at Washington. It was General Ringgold's practice
to drive to Washington in his coach-and-four with outriders, and to bring
this political associates home with him. Among his guests were Presi-
dent Monroe and Henry Clay. Mrs. Clay, you know," Prue adds, '* was
a Hagerstown girl named Lucretia Hartt. But this lavish hospitality
and great extravagance finally worked Ringgold's ruin, and when he
died his estate went to his creditors."
" Yes," Baily adds, "he had a jolly-dog way of lighting cigars
with bank-notes, I have read ; and each season would sell a farm to pay
the expenses of the preceding congressional term."
The old manor-house was turned into St. James' College many years
ago, but now only a grammar school occupies the premises.
The streams hereabout run in deep ravines and give good water-
power. At Grimes station, the next stop, there is an old-time stone
mill of huge proportions, with gambrel roof, exposed wheel and mossy
flume, the whole surrounded by an orchard ; near by stands the small,
half ruined stone cottage of the miller, nearly hidden in the trees, making
a charming subject for a picture.
Just beyond we get a small glimpse of a river, deep and powerful,
seen down through a gorge which opens and shuts again as we leap its
chasm. A few quaint houses (New Industry) fill the mouth of the gorge,
but before we can look twice they are gone. Such is our first sight of
the Potomac.
Not far eastward of Grimes is Sharpsburg and the mouth of the Antie-
tam, a district which seems to have been especially populous in prehis-
toric days, and where an extraordinary number of relics and traces of
Indian residence have been found. At Martinsburg lived a great settle-
ment of Tuscaroras, and upon the Opequon, which empties near there,
dwelt a big band of Shawnees. At the mouth of the Antietam (which
flows southward parallel with the railroad and two to four miles distant)
there occurred in 1735 a memorable battle between the Catawbas and
Delawares, for whom the Potomac was a border line, resulting in the
defeat of the Delawares.
More thrilling war history than this makes this station memorable,
however, for here, on September 17th, 1862, was fought a part of the
great battle of the Antietam, the more central struggle of which took place
in the plain eastward of the railway. Here at Grimes, however, was
the extreme left of the Confederate line, where the trees are still scarred
with the bullets, and the corn-fields conceal the wasted shot of that fatal
21
day. A short distance beyond is a station called Antietam — the point of
departure for Sharpsburg and its stone bridge, two miles distant, which
lay at the heart of the hardest fighting. For three miles the railroad runs
immediately in rear of the position held by the main command of "Stone-
wall" Jackson, and every acre of ground was stained by the blood of
brave men. In the large brick house seen among the trees a short dis-
tance eastward of the station. General Lee had his head-quarters.
The United States soldiers' cemetery, where more than 5,000 of the
Federal dead are buried, is near the village, but not in sight from the
station; from the crest of the hill it covers, a general view of the whole
battle-field can be obtained.
When we come upon the Potomac again it is with startling sudden-
ness. Out of the clover and corn fields the train hides itself in a deep
cut, and thence rushes forth upon the lofty bridge which spans the noble
river at Shepherdstown.
Shepherdstown lies upon the southern bank and is one of the
quaintest of villages. The cliff-like banks of the river are hung with
verdure, few buildings skirt the water or nestle in the ravines which
extend up to the level of the town, and on the northern side of the
stream the famous old Chesapeake and Ohio canal still floats its cumber-
some boats. At the head of a ravine stands one of those old stone
mills, most temptingly placed for sketching, and the whole presentation
of the town, with the green, still river curving grandly out of view
beneath it, is one long to be remembered.
Having crossed the Potomac, we are now in the northeastern corner
of West Virginia, and, in Shepherdstown, enter its oldest settlement,
founded in 1734 by Thomas Shepherd, whose descendants still live there
and own some of the original land. The pioneers were Germans from
Pennsylvania chiefly, and the village has more the appearance of a
Maryland than a Virginia town. Its settlement was followed closely by
a large incoming of Quakers, who located themselves at the foot of
the North mountain.
This community was active in revolutionary days, and from it sprang
the first of those "buck-tail" mountaineers, who, recruiting as they went,
hastened on foot to aid Washington, at Boston, in 1775, when he first
called for troops. No incident in local history, however, is more important
than the experimentation which was carried on here by James Ramsay,
in 1785, toward the invention of a steamboat. The plan of the Chesa-
peake and Ohio canal was then under consideration, and projects for
inland navigation were stimulating inventive thoughts. Washington and
others became especially interested in what Mr. Ramsay was doing,
and aided his experiments. Finally there was produced and tried on the
Potomac a steamboat which unquestionably ante-dates the discoveries in
this direction of Fulton and perhaps of Fitch. Ramsay's steamer was a
fiat-boat, "propelled by a steam engine working a vertical pump in the
middle of the vessel, by which the water was drawn in at the bow, and
\
22
EVENING ON THE UPPER POTOMAC.
^^
23
expelled through a horizontal trunk at the stern." The impact of this
forcible stream against the static water of the river pushed the boat along,
just as a cuttle-fish swims. This boat was eighty feet long, and, with a
cargo of three tons, attained a speed up the current of four miles an
hour. She was soon disabled, however, by the explosion of her boiler.
Relics of her machinery are preserved in the National Museum, owing
to the forethought of Colonel Boteler, of Shepherdstown.
During the late war Shepherdstown and its environs were the theatre
■of incessant army operations, and the town itself was shelled more than
once by alternate guns. Its position made it an impracticable point for
either army to hoi i, while its neighborhood was desirable to both. Hence
in the evenly contested campaigns of the earlier years of the war, and the
great marches and counter-marches which took place later, Shepherds-
town was alternately occupied by both "enemies" to its peace and
prosperity.
Walking in the evening to the high bluffs near the end of the fine
bridge, and feasting our eyes on the beauty of the river-picture stretching
away to Harper's Ferry, we can see, a mile below the town, ripples
upon the water, near some large kilns and cement mills, which betokens
a shallow place.
" There," I say to Prue, " is the famous old Pack-horse ford, which
got its name in the colonial days when all the mountain paths were
simply * trails,' and the pack-horse the only means of transportation.
Here would cross the northern savages when they went on their war
expeditions against the southern tribes, and there emigrants and hunters
and surveyors found their easiest transit of the river."
"I suppose," says Prue, "this must have been an important point
in the late war, if, as you say, all the bridges were destroyed."
"It was. Soldiers were always crossing and re-crossing, but it
became of especial use to Lee. By it a part of his army marched to the
field of Antietam, and after the battle the whole of his forces re-crossed
•on the night of Septemper i8, to the Virginia side, at this ford. The
main body of the Confederates continued their retreat inland, but a part
of Jackson's army, under A. P. Hill, remained in partial concealment,
and on that bluff which you see cleared just this side of the ford, bat-
teries were planted. This was on the 19th of September, two days after
the Antietam battle. Gen. Fiiz John Porter, with the Federal fifth corps,
had been ordered by McCIellan to support the cavalry, and he deter-
mined to try to capture some of Hill's guns. He posted batteries
on the knolls through which the railway passes at the northern
end of the bridge, and lined the top of the Maryland bank with
skirmishers and sharpshooters, supporting them by two divisions.
Volunteers from the 4th Michigan, ii8th Pennsylvania, and i8th and
i22d Massachusetts regiments plunged into the ford at dark, and
succeeded in capturing five guns. A reconnoisance in force was
sent across the river next morning (20th), at seven o'clock. The cavalry
ordered to co-operate failed to do so, and the unsupported
24
infantry was sharply attacked by a greatly superior Rebel force. It
was driven back, pushed over the cliffs, killed, captured, or forced
into the river. The ford was filled with troops, for just at that moment the
pet " Corn Exchange " regiment of Philadelphia was crossing. Into these
half-submerged, disorganized and crowding masses of men, were poured
not only the murderous fire of the Rebel cannon and rifles, but volley after
volley from the Federal guns behind them in trying to get the range
of the Confederate batteries. The slaughter was terrific. The Potomac
was reddened with blood and filled with corpses. When the routed
detachment struggled back to shelter, a fourth of the Philadelphians, who
had been in service only three weeks, were missing, and their comrades
had suffered equally.
Thus week after week, and year after year, did Shepherdstown and
the lower part of the Shenandoah valley hear the thunders and witness
the devastation of war.
VI.
THE LOWER VALLEY OF THE SHENANDOAH.
Shenandoah Junction with B. & O. R. R,— Charlestown and "John Brown's Body"
— Harewood House. — Approaching the Blue Ridge. — Berryville and its
New Railroad to Washington. — Recollections of the Early and
Sheridan Campaign. — The Old Chapel. — The Home of
Lord Fairfax. — First Sight of the Shenandoah.
— Front Royal and its Fights. —
The Massanutten.
A FEW^ miles above Shepherdstown the track crosses (upon a bridge)
the main line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The station is
called Shenandoah Junction, and here passengers change cars for the
West and for Washington. Near this point lived a trio of officers in the
Revolutionary war whose histories were sadly similar — Horatio Gates,
Charles Lee and Adam Stephen. All were with Washington at Brad-
dock's defeat and all were there wounded; all became general officers in
the Continental army; and, finally, all three were court-martialed for
misconduct on the field, and found guilty.
Before we have fully recalled these facts to each other, we cross
another railway — that from Harper's Ferry to Winchester, which was
so useful to Sheridan — and are at Charlestown, a place marked chiefly
in my recollection as the former home of that talented and lamented
humorist " Porte Crayon." The village lies off at the left of the track,
behind a square mile or so of corn fields, and is a thriving town of about
2,500 people. It is built upon lands formerly owned by Charles Wash-
ington, a younger brother of the general, and was named after him.
Lying upon the direct course between the river-gap at Harper's
Ferry (Loudon Heights rear their noble proportions just behind the
town) and the principal villages of the valley, Charlestown has had its
share in all the principal episodes of the history of the region. Hither
came Braddock's boastful army and a well is pointed out, close to the
9,5
railway station, which was dug by them. Hither, too, was brought John
Brown — "Brown of Ossawatomie " — to be hanged, and you may see a
great number of relics connected with his career. The court house in
which he was tried and the field where he was executed, are both
visible from the cars.
This way, too, following the standard held aloft as " his soul went
marching on," came the first Union troops that entered the Valley of
Virginia, and every by road here was the scene of continual fighting,
beginning with the " demonstration " made by Jackson immediately after
the battle of Winchester. Later Sheridan and Early sparred at each
other over this ground, Early having great success at first, but finally
compelled to relinquish what he had gained.
" Why it must be near here," says Prue, as we are moving off
" that Harewood House stood."
" It stands only a mile or so toward the west, and not far away you
might find the remarkable ruins of a stone church, erected during the
reign of George II."
" What was ' Harewood House' ?" Baily inquires.
" The home of George Washington's elder brother Samuel," he is
informed. " It was built under the superintendence of Washington
himself, and still stands unchanged — a valuable example of the architec-
ture of its time."
" Ah," Prue adds, " that house has seen some fine times and fine
people ! James Madison was married in it; and there Louis Phillipe and
his two ducal brothers,
Montpensier and Beauje-
laix, were entertained as
became princes."
The face of the country
waxes hilly as we proceed,
and at Fairfield we find
ourselves close to the foot
of the Blue Ridge. It is
no longer hazy blue, but
green; its features are dis-
tinctly visible, and here
and there a dot of a cabin
appears, but no large clear-
ing anywhere. The great
Dutch barns have disap-
peared, and the broad
square faces of the Dutch-
men are exchanged for the
thin countenances of the
Virginians. Every notch
through the mountains
''a dot of a cabin." has^its name, first Yeskel,
26
then Gregory, then Rock, then Snicker's. The last, though abruptly-
walled and picturesque, will admit the passage of a railway, and through it
is now being built the extension of the Washington, Ohio and Western,
finished as far as Round Hill. This road, proceeding westward across
Loudon county, the old home and retreat of Mosby's guerillas, and
worming its way through Snicker's gap, will join the Shenandoah Val-
ley's track at Berryville, and soon form an independent, shorter and
highly attractive route between the South and Washington.
All along on our right, the ground was somewhat higher than where
the tracks ran, yet not high enough to impede the view of the regular
front of the Little North mountain, here about twelve miles directly west-
ward. This slight elevation is called Limestone ridge. It runs length-
wise of the valley, and the rainfall upon its opposite slope drains into the
Opequon (0-pe'k-on).
Eleven miles above Charlestown is Berryville, the county seat of
Clarke, which has been called the " most interesting county in the valley
to the student of history." The place owes its importance to the fact
that it lies upon one of the great thoroughfares over the Blue Ridge — the
turnpike through Snicker's gap — and to the fertile country by which it is
surrounded. Berryville will begin a second prosperity when the new
railroad I have mentioned is completed from Washington to this point.
Prue asks why, long ago, it was called " Battletown," and I cannot tell
her; but there has been abundant reason since for such a name. Banks
took possession of the place as early as '6i, following the macadamized
road from Harper's Ferry to Winchester. In 1864, when Early was
retreating from his Maryland campaign, loaded with plunder, here occur-
red a sharp fight ; subsequenily Sheridan made this point a centre of
extensive operations; and on Septembers, 1864, by a mutual surprise, a
battle was precipitated in the afternoon between a large Confederate
force and the Federal eighth corps, which ceased only when it was too
dark to see. By the way of this turnpike, too, were sent forward the
great armies that pressed back Early's forces after the battles around
Winchester.
A little way past Berryville Prue calls us hastily to look down at the
right upon an old cemetery crowded with headstones, and shaded by a
growth of aged trees beneath which the tangled roses and untrimmed
borders of redolent box have flourished unchecked. A stream, mourned
over by weeping willows, creeps stealthily by; and in the midst of the
graves stands an antique chapel approached by several roads.
" Is it not peaceful and comforting?" cries Prue. "I think one
might lay a friend in such a place as that with ' sweet surcease of sor-
row ' far different from the bleak repulsiveness of most rural ceme-
teries."
"Yes, and that, perhaps, is the feeling with which at a certain time
every year the old families whose country-seats have been in this region
for many generations, assemble for a day of memorial services over their
dead who are buried under those stately trees."
27
" I am told," Baily adds, "that its first pastor was Bishop Meade,
the same who wrote a book upon the old churches and old families of
Virginia, which contains the full history of this chapel."
VIRGINIA UPLANDS.
The locality into which we are now so swiftly and smoothly pene-
trating is one replete with landmarks and traditions of Colonial history.
A mile or two beyond Boyceville, for instance, we observe, off at the
right, a stone house of old-fashioned style, which has been known for a
century as " Saratoga," because built by Hessian prisoners captured
with Burgoyne.
Then comes White Post.
" Strange name for a station," Prue remarks. " How did it arise ? "
"This," I say, " was the centre of that great estate, of more than
five millions of acres, granted by the English crown to Lord Fairfax,
Baron of Cameron, the boundaries of which included all the region
between the Rappahannock and the Potomac, marked on the west by a
line drawn from the head springs of the one to that of the other river.
It was the task of the youthful George Washington to survey that part of
this vast estate beyond the Blue Ridge, and it was in pursuance of this
duty that he made the western trips and tramped over the country in the
adventurous way we have read about. Near the intersection of the
roads from the two main gaps through this part of the mountains. Lord
Fairfax built himself a country house of no great size or elegance ; and
at the junction of the roads he set up a white oak finger-post as a guide.
The original post still remains, carefully encased for preservation."
" Is the house still standing ? "
" No ; but there is a new one on its site. Fairfax called it ' Green-
way Court,' and with the open, lavish hospitality characteristic of rich
28
frontiersmen, he made it the scene of revelry and rough, hilarious
sports, such as were enjoyed by the carousing, fox-hunting generation
in which he lived. It was his intention to have erected a larger and
more pretentious mansion, but this project was never carried out, and
the proprietor lived the remainder of his days in the house first erected.
Here he dwelt when his former protege, Washington, had successfully
prosecuted the war for independence to the surrender of Cornwallis at
Yorktown, and the deliverance of the colonies had been achieved.
Strongly attached to the English cause, when told of the surrender he
turned to his faithful servant and remarked : ' Take me to bed, Joe; it is
time for me to die.' Old and feeble at the time, he never rallied, dying
December 9, 1781."
Here Prue points out a noble height coming into view directly
ahead, which seems to lie right in the centre of the valley.
"That," she is informed, " is Massanutten mountain, or The Massi-
netto, as it is given in early writings."
"Yes," Baily interposes, "and here, at last, is the Shenandoah, the
beautiful stream that with keen poetic instinct the Children of the Forest
named The Daughter of — "
" That will do, Baily ; you don't know anything about it."
" Well, if it don't mean that, what does the name signify ? "
"Nobody seems to know, at any xzXt., you don't. Why, its very
spelling is so obscure that probably we have lost the original word en-
tirely. In the earliest accounts it was the ' Gerando,' then the ' Sheran-
do,' or ' Sherandoah,' and the present spelling is quite recent."
" Anyhow, here's the river ! "
" Yes, and isn't it a beautiful one!" Prue exclaims. "I have
heard a traveler say that ' it deserves the epithet arrowy as well as the
Rhone.' Surely, it should have a poetical name."
"And has z. musical ont., which is much more to the purpose," I insist.
" See how graceful are its curves, how silken and green its quiet current,
how deeply embowered in foliage and rocky walls, and what pretty little
gateways are broken down through them to let the hill-brooks pour their
contributions into its steady flood !"
A few moments later we cross on an iron bridge at Riverton, the
point of confluence of its two forks — the "North" and the "South."
The North fork comes down from the other side, and its basin is distin-
guished as the Shenandoah valley proper, while our route lies between
the Massanutten and the Blue Ridge, that is, up the South fork. This
is generally spoken of simply as South river, and its basin is called the
Page valley. At Riverton the Manassas branch of the Virginia Mid-
land Railway (which figured so largely in army movements during the civil
war) crosses en route from Manassas to Strasburg, and there are evi-
dences of an important manufacture of lime. The village itself is out of
sight, as also, is Front Royal, whose station is called two miles ahead. I
told Baily to stop and go over there, while Prue and I went on to Luray;
and his report was so glowing I regretted we had not been with him.
29
To the site of Front Royal, according to Baily, came white settlers
as early as 1734, and placed their houses in a sheltered nook among the
hills beside the Shenandoah, at a point where the Indian trails from
Manassas and Chester's gaps joined into one near the mouth of a little
stream since called Happy creek. This fact produced a Y-shaped set-
tlement, which, with the increasing growth of the village, has not been
changed, the three main streets still following the old paths marked out
by the moccasined feet of pre-historic pedestrians. Gradually the
fame of the fertility and beauty of the Valley of Virginia attracted settlers
■from the coast and from abroad, and the Indians were replaced by
hardy white men. This new settlement, then called Lehewtown, became
a centre of a large district and attracted so many rough characters that
BETWEEN FRONT ROYAL AND LURAY.
it came to be known as " Helltown," with good reason. By the close of
the Revolution, however, order and respectability prevailed, and in 1788
a town was incorporated, under the name of Front Royal, the origin of
which term is a nut for historians to crack. From that time on it has
been prosperous, having acquired wealth and fame in manufactures as
well as through its rich environment of farms and vineyards. There
were made the celebrated Virginia Wagons of a past day, which were the
best of their kind in the whole country, and were taken by emigrants
to every new state and territory as forerunners of the prairie schooner.
Hand-made and durable as the "deacon's one-hoss shay," their cost
was so great that the machine-made wagons have surpassed them as
thoroughly as the cradle has overcome the sickle ; but Front Royal still
30
shapes and sells great quantities of spokes, hubs and other wagon
material of the best quality.
Front Royal is now a neat and pretty village, of perhaps a thousand
people, which is growing rapidly. As the county seat of Warren it
becomes the residence of the professional men of the district, and is
marked by a society of unusual intelligence.
Here occurred some exceedingly interesting incidents during the
war, in one of which a mere handful of Confederate cavalry under a
boyish commander dashed into the village, captured the provost guard,
and made off with it successfully, though two whole regiments of
bewildered Federals were at hand to protect the place. Ashby (whose
birthplace and home was up in the Blue Ridge, not far away) was hover-
ing about here much of the time, while Jackson enacted his series of
victories in this district ; and on May 22, 1864, here took place one
of the most disgraceful routes Union soldiers ever were ashamed of,
four companys of Flournoy's Virginians attacking a thousand or so
of Banks* army, entrenched on Guard hill, with such impetuosity as to
scare them in utter confusion from their works, with great loss of life,
stores and artillery. These disasters were requited later in the same
year, however, when Sheridan, driving back Early, fought so stubbornly
along this very limestone ridge which the railway track follows ; and
Front Royal echoed again and again, during that and the subsequent
year, to the roar of cannon, the sharper crackle of small arms and the
hoofs of charging cavalry.
From Front Royal station southward to Luray the line passes
through a region of wooded hills and deep ravines, the latter crossed
upon some very high trestles. The river is often close beneath the
track, and its course through these rocky highlands presents many views
that excite our admiration. We are fairly among the foot-hills of the
Blue Ridge here, though its central peaks are far enough away to show
to good advantage. In this rough district, where more wooded than
cleared land is seen, a fine grade of " neutral hematite " iron ore occurs,
the principal point of shipment for which is at Rileyville. A few mo-
meni's after leaving that station we are at Luray, and have alighted to
take a pleasant night's rest, and see the wonderful caverns.
VII.
LURAY AND ITS CAVERNS.
Old Caves.— Discovery of the New Caverns. — Startling Effect of Electric Light in the
Cave.— Theory of Excavation.— A Rapid Survey.— The Bridal Chamber and
its " Idiots " — Varieties of Stalactite.— Richness of Color. — Musical
Resonance. — The Skeleton. — A Fair World. — Value of a Good
Hotel.— Luray as a Summer Residence.
Page valley is here several miles wide, and the surface is diver-
sified by an endless series of knolls, ridges, and deeply embedded streams.
" The rocks throughout the whole of this region have been much dis-
placed, having been flexed into great folds, the direction of which
coincides with that of the Appalachian mountain-chain. In fact these
folds are a remnant of the results of that series of movements in which
the whole system primarily originated." Hidden in the woods near the
top of one of these hills, about a mile east of Luray, an old cave has
always been known to exist. Connected with it are traditions which
reach back to the Ruffners, the earliest settlers of the valley, and it has
taken their name.
In 1878 Mr. B. P. Stebbins, of Luray, conceived the project of a
more complete exploration of it, with a view of making it an object of
interest to tourists, and he invited the co-operation of the brothers
Andrew and William E. Campbell. These gentlemen declined to go into
the old cave, but were ready to engage in a search for a new one, and
went ranging over the hills, but for four weeks succeeded only in exciting
the astonishment and ridicule of the neighborhood, when, returning one
August day from a long tramp, the men approached home over the hill
where Ruffner's cave was. In the cleared land on the northern slope,
a couple of hundred yards or so from the mouth of the old cave, was a
sink-hole choked with weeds, bushes, and an accumulation of sticks
and loose stones, through which they fancied they felt cool currents of
air sifting.
Laboriously tumbling out the bowlders, Mr. Andrew Campbell was
finally able to descend by the aid of a rope into a black abyss, which
was not bottomless, however, for he soon let go of the rope and left his
companions on the surface to their conjectures. Becoming uneasy at
his long absence, his brother also descended, and together the men
walked in a lofty passage for several rods, where their progress was
stopped by water. Returning, they told Mr, Stebbins what they had
seen, and all agreed upon a policy of silence until the property could be
bought. Then they went home and dreamed of " millions in it." Such
was the discovery of the Luray cave.
Dreams are but a " baseless fabric." The property was bought of a
bankrupted owner, at sheriff's sale, but upon an intimation of its
underground value, one of the relatives of the original owner sued for
recovery upon an irregularity in the sale, and after two years of tedious
litigation, he won his suit. Previously a company of Northern men, of
32
HALL OF THE GIANTS.
whom Mr. R. R. Corson, of Philadelphia, is president, had formed a
joint-stock company to purchase the property, and it passed into their
hands in the spring of i88t. But during the two years the original cost
had swelled, while the early visions had dwindled, until they met at
$40,000. This is the history of the " wonder," and now we are ready to
enter it.
But it is over a mile from the hotel to the cave, and the day is
warm. Enquiry ^develops the information that if we are willing to wait
33
until some train arrives we may find hacks at the station which will take
us the round trip for thirty-five cents ; but if we wish to go at our own
convenience the clerk at the hotel will summon a hack when we please,
and we must pay fifty cents fare.
I had been intending to buy Baily a certain cigarette-holder which
had taken his fancy, as a present, but I reflected that if instead I took
the money it would cost and applied it to paying the extra charge of the
latter alternative we would enjoy the trip better, so I told Mr. Mullin
that I would ask him to telephone for a hack at once. This was after
breakfast on the morning succeeding our arrival.
" What shall I wear? " asks Prue, " I suppose it's a horrible muddy
and soiling place, I shall envelop myself in my waterproof, of course,
but how about a bonnet ? "
" No change whatever is needful," we were told. " You will find an
even temperature of about 56° Fahrenheit throughout the cave, and all
the year round. There is plenty of room to walk about everywhere
without squeezing against the walls or striking your head, and board or
cement walks and stairways are provided throughout all the area open to
visitors. It is advisable, nevertheless, for ladies to wear rubbers, since
there is enough dampness underfoot in some places to penetrate thin-
soled boots."
So Prue resumed her traveling dress — that short-skirted, close-
fitting wine-colored flannel I like so much — donned a snug turban and
off we went. I told Baily he'd better leave his crutch-headed cane at
home, but he is a bit of a dandy and wanted to " show it to the natives,"
so I had the laugh on him when it was taken from him by the keepers
of the cavern, who wisely allow no dangerous implements of that kind
among the fragile treasures of their underground museum.
Our road led us through the long main street of the village, but we
attracted little or no attention, for nearly 20,000 tourists a year ride up
and down this stony street. Half a mile beyond the town, on the slope
of a low hill, stands a house with porticoes all around it and a public
air. Here we registered our names, paid our admission fee, and were
assigned to the charge of a guide. His first act was to hand to me a
sort of scoop-shovel reflector, or sconce, in which were placed three
lighted candles, and take another himself. This made us look at one
another, as much as to say — "This thing is a humbug!" for we had
been told of far better means of illumination than that ; but meanwhile
the guide had opened an inner door and invited us to follow him down a
staircase of masonry, and, before we supposed our day's adventures
had begun, we found ourselves in the large antechamber of the
caverns. This unpremeditated, unintentional entrance is as though you
had been dropped into the midst of it, or had waked from a sleep there,
and is most effectual in putting the stranger en rapport with the spirit of
the place.
The darkness was only faintly illuminated by our few candles, and
I was about to remonstrate, when the click and flash of an electric arc,
34
flooded the whole place with light. Our few candles were intended
merely for peering into dark corners and helping our footsteps — the
general illumination is accomplished by dozens of electric lamps hung
in all parts of the wide-winding vaults and passages. As soon as I per-
ceived this I gave my sconce to Baily, for it was a nuisance to carry it
This first chamber is about as big as a barn {iiot, a Cumberland
valley barn, Prue wisely remarks), and from it we proceed upon a
causeway of cement for a short distance past the Vegetable Garden,
the Bear Scratches, the Theatre, the Gallery ; over Muddy Lake on a
planking bridge, which is itself spanned by a sione arch ; through the
Fish Market and across the Elfin Ramble — a plateau in which the roof is
generally within reach of the hand ; and so come to Pluto's Chasm.
Gazing down over the edge of this underground ravine, Baily
exclaimed: " What mighty convulsions must they have been which rent-
these walls asunder ! "
'* There, Baily, is where you show your — well, your insufficiency of
knowledge ! This chasm owes its configuration to the same slow and
subtle agencies that produce a canon above ground in this limestone
valley."
" Why do you say ' limestone ' valley ? " Prue asks.
" Because great caves can only occur in a limestone region, since
they result from the chemical fact that carbonates of lime and magnesia,
are soluble in water containing carbonic acid. This acid abounds in
atmospheric air, and is one of the products of the decomposition
of animal and vegetable waters, so that rain-water which has
percolated through the soil has usually been enriched with it from both
sources. Let this chemically charged water find its way into some
crevice, and it only requires time and abundance of water to dissolve
and hollow out Pluto's and all the other chasms, halls, galleries and
avenues ; and when once this work has well begun, other natural
agencies contribute their aid to the enlargement of the area and the
adornment of its interior.
From the chasm, where there is a Bridge of Sighs, a Balcony, a
Spectre, and various other names and habitations, we re-cross the Elfin
Ramble, pass successively Titania's Veil, Diana's Bath — the lady was
not fastidious — and come to a very satisfactory Saracen Tent.
Then we ascend stairways past the Empress Column— easily
empress of all, I think — and proceed under the Fallen Column to the
spacious nave of the Cathedral. We pause to note its lofty groined
roof and Gothic pillars — surely, in some like scene to this, the first
architect of that style met his inspiration! — its large, Michael-
Angelesque Angel's Wing, and its Organ. Then we sit down and turn
to the prostrate stalactite. It is as big as a steamboat boiler, and bears
an enormous pagoda of stalagmitic rock which has grown there since
it fell. It thus forms a good text for a conversation, as to the age and'
geology of the cave, the materials for which we found by reading an
excellent pamphlet on the subject published by the Smithsonian, and
35
BANKS OF THE
RHINE,
I.URAY CAVERNS.
which may be procured
at Luray. The gist of it
is, that the cave is proba-
bly considerably later in
its origin than the close
of the carboniferous period, and not more ancient than the Mammoth
or Wyandotte caves. The indications are, that in past ages the work
went on with great rapidity, but that latterly change has been very slow,
and at present has almost ceased.
Leaving the Cathedral, a narrow, jagged passage, we get an
outlook down into a sort of devil's pantheon, full of grotesque shapes
and colossal caricatures of things animate and inanimate, castmg odd
and suggestive shadows in whose gloom fancy may work marvels of
unworldly effect, and then are led by a stairway to a well-curtained
room called the Bridal Chamber.
"Was anyone ever really married here ?" asks Prue, incredulously.
*' Three couples, so far, Madame," the guide informs her.
" Well ! " exclaims the neat little lady. " I had no idea there were
such idiots ! Now if you had said three funerals, I could have found
some appropriateness in it."
The back door of the Bridal Chamber admits to Giant's Hall, just
beyond which is the Ballroom — both large and lofty apartments, con-
stituting a separate portion of the cave, parallel with the length of
Pluto's Chasm. In the Ballroom we have worked back opposite the
entrance, having followed a course roughly outlined by the letter U.
36
I have thus run hastily over the greater part of the ground open to
the public, in order to give an idea of its extent and nomenclature. To
describe each figure and room separately is impossible. The best I can
do is to try to give some general notion of the character of the ornamental
formations of crystalline rock which render this cave without a peer in
the world, perhaps, for the startling beauty and astonishing variety of its
interior.
Though the simple stalactite will be circular and gradually decreas-
ing in size, conically, from its attachment to its acuminate point, yet
innumerable variations may occur, as the dripping or streaming water
that feeds it is diverted from its direct and moderate flowing.
Chief of all the varieties, and the one that in lavish profusion is to be
seen everywhere in these caverns, is that which, by growing on the edges
only, produces not a round, icicle form, but a wide and thin laminated or
sheet form, which is best described by its semblance to heavy cloth
hanging in pointed folds and wrinkles, as a table-cover arranges itself
about a corner. Where ledges and table-like surfaces — of which there
are many instances in the cave — are most abundant, there the " drapery"
is sure to form. In the Market it crowds the terraced walls in short,
thick, whitish fringes, like so many fishes hung up by the gills. The
Saracen Tent is formed by these great, flat, sharply tipped and gently
curving plates, rich brown in color, depending from a square canopy so
that they reach the floor, save on one side, where you may enter as
through conveniently parted canvas. The Bridal Chamber is curtained
from curious gaze by their massive and carelessly graceful folds ; the
walls of Pluto's Chasm are hung with them as in a mighty wardrobe ;
Diana's Bath is concealed under their protecting shelter ; Titania's Veil is
only a more delicate texture of the same ; Cinderella Leaving the Ball
becomes lost in their folds as she glides, lace-white, to her disrobing ;
and a Sleeping Beauty has wrapped these abundant blankets about her
motionless form ; while the Ballroom carries you back to the days of
the Round Table, for the spacious walls are hung as with tapestries.
Do not disbelieve me when I speak of wealth of color. The
range is small, to be sure, but the variation of tint shade is infinite and
never out of tune. Where the growth is steady and rapid, the rock is
crystal white as at the various Frozen Cascades, the Geyser and many
instances of isolated stalactites. But when the steady growth ceases,
the carbonic moisture of the air eats away the glistening particles of
lime, and leaves behind a discolored residuum of clay-dust and iron
oxides. Thus it happens that, from the niveous purity or pearly surface
of the new work there runs a gentle gradation through every stage of
yellowish and whitish brown to the dun of the long abandoned and
dirty stalagmite, the leaden gray of the native limestone, or the inky
shadow that lurks behind. It is thus that the draped and folded
tapestries in the Ballroom are variegated and resplendent in a thousand
hues. Moreover, various tints are often combined in the same object,
particularly in the way of stripes more or less horizontal, due to the
37
varying amount of iron, silica, or other foreign matter which the lime-
water contained from time to time.
The best example of this, and, indeed, of the "drapery formation"
generally, is to be found in the Wet Blanket. A large number of the
pillars are probably hollow, and are formed by the crowding together of
many drapery-stalactites, which finally have coalesced, leaving the
pillar deeply fluted, or seamed up and down, along their connected
edges. When you find one of these massive, ribbed and rugged pillars
vanishing above in a host of curved stalactites, their thin and wavy
selvages guiding the eye to tips which seem to sway and quiver over-
head, it is hard not to believe it is an aged willow turned to stone,
Indeed the whole scene, in many parts, is strongly suggestive of a
forest with tangled undergrowths, thrifty saplings, fallen logs, and crowd-
ing ranks of sturdy trees.
In more than the general effect, indeed, the ornamental incrustations
of this cave mimic the vegetable growths outside. Many of the
stalactites are embroidered with small excrescences and complicated
clusters of protruding and twisted points and flakes, much like leaves,
buds, and twigs. To these have been given the scientific name of
LURAY INN.
39
helictites, and the grottoes of Stebbins Avenue exhibit them to the
best advantage.
Then there are the botryoids — round and oblong tubers covered
with twigs and tubercles, such as that cauliflower-like group which
gives the name to the Vegetable Garden ; these grow where there is a
continual spattering going on. A process of decomposition, dissolv-
ing out a part and leaving a spongy framework behind, furnishes to
many other districts quantities of plant-semblances, that you may name
and name in endless distinction. Then, in the many little hollow basins
or "baths," and in the bottom of the gorges where still water lies, so
crystal clear you cannot find its surface nor estimate its depth — where
STATION AND RESTAURANT AT LURAY.
the blue electric flame opens a wonderful new cave beneath your feet in the
unrecognized reflection of the fretted roof, and where no ice is needed to
cool nor cordial competent to benefit the taste of the beverage — there the
hard gray rock blossoms forth into multitudes of exquisite flowers of
crystallization, with petals rosy, fawn-colored and white, that apparent-
ly a breath would wilt. •
But I niust cease this attempt at even a suggestion of the possible
variety of size and shape, mimicry and quaint device to be met with in
this cavern.
That rigid stone should lend itself to so many delicate, graceful,
airy shapes and attitudes, rivaling the flexible flower of the organic
world, fills the mind with astonishment and bewilders the eye. And
when you have struck the thin and pendent curtains, or the " pipes " of
40
the Organ In the Cathedral, and have found that each has a rich, deep,
musical reasonance of varying pitch, then your admiration is complete.
The impression of it all made upon such visitors as are affected at all be-
yond ohs! and ahs! if written down, would form very curious reading;
but little has been recorded, chiefly because it is one of the most difficult
things in the wide world to do adequately.
The cave has not yet much human interest; but we must not forget
to follow down a long stairway into a deep and narrow gluch, where the
dampness and gloom is little relieved by anything to please the eye. At
the foot of the staircase the guide drops his lantern close to a trench-like
depression, through which a filmy brooklet trickles noiselessly. No
need of interrogation — there is no mistaking that slender, slightly
curved, brown object, lying there half out, half embedded in the rock,
with its rounded and bi-lobed head, nor its grooved and broken compan-
ions. They are not fallen, small stalactites; they are human bones.
Fit for the mausoleum of emporers, what a vast vault to become the
sarcophagus of one poor frame !
Out into the warm, sweet air again, all the world looks fairer for
one's temporary occultation. Surely the Troglodytes had a hard lot.
Even the Naiads under the water, and the Dryads, though indissoluble
from growing trees, were better off !
And what a fair world it is ! How prodigal of beauty are soil and
sun! How grandly has the architect and landscape-gardener of the
globe adorned this valley! How precious the scene to him whose
beloved home is here; and how novel and entertaining its features to the
stranger!
Rested and well-fed we sit upon the piazza of the inn and thank the
good fortune which brought us hither. No one can appreciate a good
hotel better than he whose ill-luck it was to travel in the South a dozen
years ago, where that article was unknown. The people who owned
and prepared the cave, and the railwaymen who meant to profit by it,
knew that the country taverns would never do. They built on this hill
top, in the midst of a populous valley which was not only pleasant to
look at, and charming to ride and walk over, but which could supply all
the fresh vegetables and fruit and meat so desirable upon a rural table;
a hotel constructed after that most picturesque design — the Early
English — and including all the modern appliances for health and com-
fort. Beyond the ornamental grounds, we see puffs of steam coming
from a half-hidden building. There is where the water is pumped up to
the hotel, where the gas is made which illuminates all its rooms, and
where the dynamo is placed which supplies the electric lights of the cave
through a circuit over seven miles in length.
The Luray Inn, then, is not only a charming stopping-place for the
casual transient tourist who stops off only half a day to see the caves,
but offers an attractive residence to visitors who may choose to stay a
week or a month or a whole summer.
41
MmagaMggEw
No part of the valley is more interesting. If historically disposed,
the visitor may reconstruct the odd life which went on here a century
and a half ago, whose
quaint customs are not yet
forgotten.
" Who were the settlers
here at first," Prue in-
quires, "and what does
this queer name Luray
mean ?"
" One question answers
the other. This part of
the valley was settled first
by Huguenots who had
escaped from France thro'
the Palatinate; and they
named their district Lor-
raine, which has been cor-
rupted into Luray, by
changes really slight when
you think of the eliptical
tendency of all pronuncia-
tion in Virginia."
If recent history is more
attractive, then here is the
place to gather thrilling
reminiscences of the long
campaigns of the civil war
from Jackson in '6i to
Sheridan's victory in '65,
which belong to every hill-
AN "interior" in THE INN AT LURAY.
42
top and each valley road. If one enjoys sport, here are the forests and
stream of the Blue Ridge or the Massanutten, and
" a full-fed river winding slow,
By herds upon an endless plain."
If he is an artist — surely he could find no richer field. Luray itself is a
relic of the old-time Virginia rural villages — quaint, irregular, vine-grown
and full of romantic suggestion. Along the river, pictures of the most
enchanting character may be found; with the water in the foreground, a
rocky wall right or left, a middle distance of farm-lands and well-
rounded copses, the vista will always lead straight to the clustered peaks
that stand proud and shapely on the horizon.
" Ah, what a depth in that blue sky,
With rug-ged mountains softly blent;
As here we wandered, you and I,
Singing, painting-, as we went."
VIII.
UP THE SOUTH FORK.
The Hawksbill.— Shield's Pursuit of Jackson.— " Stonewall's" Personal Fighting.—
Elkton.— The Battle of Port Republic. —Iron Mining and Manufacture.—
Other Minerals.— The Way to the White Sulphur Springs.—
Jubal Early's Defeat at Waynesboro.
From Luray southward the road runs upon a ridge separating the
Shenandoah from the Hawksbill, which was crossed on a high trestle just
at town, and whose broad valley is filled with prosperous farms. It was
a favorite resort for cavalrymen during the late war, since they not only
found it a capital region to operate in, but plentifully stored with forage.
Through the many passes in this part of the Blue Ridge would descend
the troopers of Mosby, and to the same fastnesses fled the horsemen of
Early's hard-pressed squadrons, only to re-appear again the moment the
coast was clear.
Up this South fork, in 1862, Shields hastened forward after Jackson,
who had escaped between him and Fremont at Strasburg, while the latter
commander chased him up the North fork. The plan was to unite at
the southern end of the Massanutten, and there defeat the weary and
weakened Rebels by means of their combined forces — a plan which prom-
ised success, but failed to keep its promise.
Shields' first care was the bridges, of which three spanned the Shen-
andoah between Luray and Port Republic. One of these was just here
opposite Marksville station (a place now noteworthy for the superior
ochre which is mined in its vicinity), but he was too late, for Jackson had
burned it. Thus compelled to take muddy roads (this was the first week
of June), he struggled slowly along the western bank of the river until
his advance had arrived at Conrad's store, where was the next bridge,
and which is only a mile or two from our station, Elkton, on Elk run.
43
(It was by the way of Swift Run gap and down this little side valley, that
Spottswood and his "Knights of the Golden Horseshoe" first looked
upon the Shenandoah, in 1716, whence sprang the Scotch-Irish ancestors
of the land-holders of this region.) Carroll, one of Shield's subordinates,
pushing north to secure the bridge at Conrad's, with Tyler's brigade a
few miles behind, surprised the whole of Jackson's trains and camp, left
under the guard of only a few cavalrymen with three guns. Dashing in,
Carroll nearly stampeded the train and escort, but it happened that the
commander and his staff were there, and taking part himself in the very
front of the skirmish, Jackson succeeded in recapturing the bridge, beat-
ing back the bold Federal squad, and recovering his equipage. Mean-
while the battle of Cross Keys, a few miles to the westward had begun,
Ewell's Confederates facing Fremont and holding him in check until
night allowed the vanquished Federals to retreat.
All this time our merry train has been carrying us southward, and
when the whistle sounds for Port Republic — the next station above
Elkton — we are running straight across the river-plain on which was
fought the frightful battle of June loth, 1862, where the dead lay so
thickly that Jackson thought they must outnumber the living.
Here is the head of the South fork of the Shenandoah, and the
town takes its name from the fact that formerly flat-boat navigation began
at this "port." About four miles southwest, the North and Middle
rivers, the principal tributaries that go to make the main Shenandoah,
unite, and at this point. South river, coming from the base of the Blue
Ridge, joins them. In the angle between South and Middle rivers lies
the town, and through it goes the valley turnpike on its way to the cross-
ing of the Blue Ridge at Brown's gap. From the cultivated river-plain
a succession of terraces arise to the wooded spurs of the mountains.
On the morning of the loth of June, the Union army under Shields
had been planted below the town in a very advantageous position.
Jackson's men were divided, but withdrawing Ewell's army from its posi-
tion at Cross Keys, Jackson soon outnumbered the force of Shields, who
could expect no help from Fremont. The fighting began early in the
day and was especially severe in the elevated woods upon the left of the
line of battle, where Tyler's Federal guns were captured and re-captured
by hand-to-hand conflicts in the thickets. At first the Confederates got
the worst of it, and their general trembled for the result; but his arrange-
ments were so careful, his celerity in re-inforcing was so great, and his
men were so recklessly courageous, that they bloodily snatched victory
from defeat and pressed the Federals so heavily that for a short time the
retreat became a rout. The loss was terrific — a far larger percentage
than is usual in battles; and though the cavalry began to follow the
fleeing foe they were speedily recalled, and before night the whole Con-
federate army was hastily withdrawing into the security of Brown's gap,
Fremont, who had come to the bluffs on the western bank of the river
giving them a parting salvo.
Meanwhile Shields (and later, Fremont), under orders from
44
McDowell, continued the retreat to the base of operations in the lower
valley. These battles of Cross Keys and Port Republic closed Jackson's
momentous and brilliant campaigns of 1862 — closed them in the very
region where they were begun with a small and dispirited army only three
months before. The succeeding week he spread his camps in the park-
like groves and dells which lie a little south of Port Republic — the very
hills through which the track now winds so ingeniously.
But'Baily, who has a practical turn of mind far above me, has been
listening to only a portion of my war stories, having gone off to chat with
a gentleman whom he somehow discovered was informed about iron
matters in these hills. Reporting this conversation, Baily tells us that
this region is full of metallic wealth and has long furnished iron and
various other useful minerals to commerce, rivaling the mining districts
of the Appalachian ranges north of the great valley. On the Massa-
nutten outcrops of iron ores, classified as Clinton Nos. Ill and V, occur
in nearly every peak, while universally, almost, at the western base of
the Blue Ridge, primordial iron comes to the surface.
" We have just passed," says Baily, " at the station called Milnes,
between Luray and Elkton, the large Shenandoah Iron Works, where
for many years charcoal iron has been made, but now blast furnaces
have been erected and coke-iron is made. They tell me that the com-
pany owns 35,000 acres of land alongthe foot of the mountains, only a
small portion of which is under cultivation, and that the iron ore is quar-
ried out of open excavations."
" What sort of iron is made ?"
" The ore is a brown hematite, and the product is a neutral iron of
especial value for foundry use. Only pig is cast now, but blooms can
be made when the market justifies it. About three hundred and fifty
men are employed."
" Is that all there is at the station ? " I ask.
" No, it is the end of a division of the railway — you noticed that we
changed locomotives ; and there are small repair shops. The result is a
busy little town which furnishes the neighboring farmers so steady a
market for their beef, poultry, garden produce and forage, that they are
well-off and enhancing the value of their lands by steady improvements
and a higher style of agriculture. Sixty or seventy dollars an acre is
asked for the best farms in that neighborhood, though a great deal of
unimproved land may be bought for ten dollars an acre."
Iron, however, is not the whole mineral wealth of this region.
Umber, ochre, copper, manganese, marble, kaolin, fire-clay and various
other useful metals and earths are known to lie adjacent to the line of
railway we are following, and are rapidly being availed of by capitalists.
A complete account of these resources has recently appeared in a com-
pact volume written by Prof. A. S. McCreath, while, in the files of that
admirable monthly, The Virginias, published by Major Jed. Hotch-
kiss, at Staunton, detailed information and statistics may be found.
" By the way," Baily remarks, as the train pulls up at Waynesboro
45
Junction, a mile from the large and well known town of Waynesboro,
" Hotchkiss says this place deserves a name of its own, because it is
going to be a great town some day."
" Why does he think so ? "
" On account of the ease of transportation to it from four directions
of the crude materials; of minerals and timber property abounding in the
i--»i>--inf%--ir~f-i
region to which it forms the cen-
tre, and of the machinery neces-
sary to their manufacture."
Just now Waynesboro is mere-
ly the crossing of our road by
the Chesapeake and Ohio. A
number of passengers disembarked who were bound for the White
Sulphur and other springs across the mountains to the westward,
while some were going the other way to wine-making Charlottesville
or to Richmond. To the White Sulphur and other famous Virginian
mountain resorts we found this was coming to be a favorite route
from both north and south, its own loveliness, the opportunity of
thus seeing one or both of the two great "natural curiosities" of the
Alleghanian region, Luray Caverns, and the Natural Bridge, and the
exceeding wildness of the scenery along the mountain division of the
46
Chesapeake and Ohio (or of the Richmond and Alleghany for those who
choose to go via Loch Laird and Clifton Forge), recommending it above
other routes. The Madame was very anxious to go over to the White
Sulphur, which her imagination, stimulated by traditions of the ante-
bellum aristocracy, had painted in very glowing colors ; but I told her it
was impossible now, and so we kept our seats and went rushing south-
ward again through the green hills that divide the headwaters of the
Shenandoah from the tributaries of the James.
The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, to which I have referred (or
at least this part of it), was known before the war as the Virginia Central;
and as it was one of the two routes between Richmond and the Valley
of Virginia, it was of great importance to the Confederates. To destroy
it, therefore, became one of the objects of every Federal force in the
valley, though that end was not achieved until Sheridan's successes of
1864.
Toward the close of that campaign the vicinity of Waynesboro
became a continual skirmish-ground, and everything was laid waste.
Before the winter of 1864-5 had passed, Sheridan again appeared in
force, the cavalry sent to contest his advance proving inefficient. The
Confederate commander, Jubal Early, had collected his army as well as
he could and posted them upon a ridge just on the further (western) edge
of Waynesboro, where Sheridan's advance came up with him on March
2d. " Custer at once sent three regiments around the enemy's left
flank, while at the same time charging in front with the other two
brigades. The position was carried in an instant, with little, if any loss
on either side, and almost the entire force captured, all Early's wagons
and subsistence, tents, ammunition, seventeen flags, eleven guns (includ-
ing five found in the town) and, first and last, about 1,600 officers and
men. ... As for Early, Long, Wharton, and the other Confederate
Generals, they fled into the woods, and Early himself soon after barely
escaped capture by Sheridan's cavalry, while making his way to Richmond.
The victory at Waynesboro left Sheridan complete master of the valley."
47
IX.
CRAB-TREE FALLS AND THE NATURAL
BRIDGE.
A Rougher Landscape.— Sources of the Shenandoah.— Crab-tree Falls!— Ascent of
Three Thousand Feet of Cataracts.— View from Pinnacle Mountain.—
Lexington and Loch Laird.— Approaching the Natural Bridge.—
The Hotel.— Prue's Surprise.— Majesty of the Bridge —
The Attractions along Cedar Creek.— The Pic-
ture from Above. — Surrounding Scenery
and Amusements.— The Bridge
bv Moonlight.
Though the vicinity of Waynesboro, for some miles southward, is a
well cultivated farming and grazing region, by the time Stuart's Draft is
reached the face of the country where the track passes has become too
rough for farming, and the scene from the car-windows is an ever vary-
ing panorama of rugged hills and deep ravines. Almost the only signs
of human occupation are small log cabins, whose restraint-hating, indo-
lence-loving occupants earn a scanty living by chopping logs; gathering
oak and hemlock bark (one of the leading products of this region, where
large tanneries exist), and sumac leaves; in hunting, fishing and feeble
farming. The hills we are passing across — a tangled series of folds
belonging to the Blue Ridge — are called the Big Levees, and are domin-
ated eastwardly by the Humpback mountains. Their drainage forms
the South river, and hence the uppermost source of the Shenandoah.
The streams which go to make it up are countless, prattling down every
green hollow. Now and then a'pretty cascade is seen, like the Cypress
falls opposite Riverside, leaping fierce and white out of the wooded
precipice into a deep and quiet pool.
The greatest of all cataracts in the Virginian mountains, however,
is the Crab-tree falls, reached by the old pike road from Vesuvius to
Montebello and the Tye River valley east of the Blue Ridge. Sheridan
once passed a large part of his army across the mountains by this road.
At the very summit, from among the topmost crags of Pinnacle peak, one
of the highest in Virginia, comes the Crab-tree to take its fearful course.
Thence it descends three thousand feet in making a horizontal distance
of two thousand, forming "a series of cascades athwart the face of the
rock, over which the water shimmers in waves of beauty, like veils of
lace trailed over glistening steel." The course of the stream is distinctly
visible from a long distance down the face of the great crag, which con-
trasts sharply with the leafy masses on each side, and forms a striking
landmark. The cascades vary from over five hundred feet in the highest
to fifty or sixty in the lowest, and are greatly different in form and
appearance. The Crab-tree is not a large stream; in one or two places
the entire body of water is compressed into a shooting jet not more than
six inches in diameter, but, with the economy of nature, nothing is lost
in artistic effect.
Three miles down Tye river the ascent of the falls is begun by
entering the forest and a chaos of massive rocks. " The forest is so
48
dense," says H. L. Bridgman, of New York, " that scarcely can the sun-
light pierce it. Stately oaks, wide-spreading maples and hickories, the
birch and beech, with an occasional pine, and at rare intervals the light
gray foliage of the cucumber-tree, make up a forest scene of wonderful
beauty. Scarcely are we within the woods when, looking aloft, we see
through the leafy green of tree tops the white spray of the ' Galvin ' cata-
ract, named in compliment to our guide, and 150 feet high. This is a clear,
bold fall, and rather larger in volume and force than any of the others.
The effects of the sunlight and shadow upon the fall and the forest are
exceedingly graceful and picturesque, and from the beginning of the
ascent all the way to the top the scene changes and shifts like a fairy
panorama. . . . An hour or more of hard work and steady climbing
brings us to the base of the 'Grand Cataract,' the first leap of the entire
series, a clear fall of over 500 feet. It was the Grand Cataract which
we had seen from the road far below, and looking upward from its base,
the sight was like a sheet of foam falling out of a clear sky. The water,
pure as crystal, is not projected with sufficient force to send it clear of
the rock, and so it falls over its face, vailing the rugged front of the
mountain as with a fleece. Standing at its base and looking upward,
the spectator does not realize its immense height, but comparison of the
lofty trees which tower into the heavens without approaching half the
height of the falls demonstrates the fact. At the very top and crown of
the fall, the configuration of the rock gives the current a sharp diagonal
set which adds much to its picturesque beauty. Midway, a ledge of a
few feet wide arrests the fall and throws it boldly forward in a straight
line again adown a sheer and glistening precipice of more than 200 feet.
At the base of the Grand Cataract daisies bloom, and the waters are
quite shallow."
It is possible to work one's way upward along these capricious
cataracts to the very summit, and thence overlook a wide area of primi-
tive mountain country. All about the observers tower peaks of the first
rank, heaving against the blue of heaven a surging mass of foliage.
"Dotting the mountain sides in every direction are cleared fields in
which corn, wheat and tobacco are raised, the clearings sometimes
extending to the very summits, while scattered here and there in all
directions, nestling in the intervals and pockets of the ranges, are the
log cabins of the mountaineers. Safe in these fortresses and upon a
kindly and generous soil, with a genial and salubrious climate, the
natives live from one generation to another an easy, thriftless and
contented life. No one who sees the view from the head of the Crab-
tree falls or Pinnacle mountain, no matter what his travels or
experience in this or any other country have been or may be, will ever
be able to forget its matchless charm, repose and serenity."
Through such a region as that we are now running, by the help of a
thousand curves, deep cuttings or lofty bridges. Now and then wonderful
landscapes open out — far views southward and westward into the richly
blue folds of the mountains, but chiefly our eyes are held by green dells,
49
the romantic river, and the captivating bits of ruined canal, which
arrange themselves for an instant close to the track only to dissolve
into new pictures with kaleidoscopic speed.
At Loch Laird we encounter the Richmond and Alleghany Railway,
which forms an exceedingly picturesque route from Richmond westward
to a junction with the Chesapeake and Ohio at Clifton Forge. Its only
availability to us here would be as the means of access to Lexington, a
town which southern people are fond of calling the "Athens of
Virginia," because of its intellectual society and regard for books.
This arises from the fact that since its foundation it has been a school
town, and has now the celebrated Military Institute of which the most
distinguished son was "Stonewall" Jackson, who is buried there.
"What river is this?" asks Prue after we had been tracing the
pretty stream for a few miles, having passed over the divide and now
were beginning to follow descending instead of ascending currents.
" The South river," I reply.
" But I thought we had just left South river behind."
"So we did. This is another, and a branch of the James. You
might find a hundred South 'rivers,' 'forks,' 'branches,' and so on in
the state. They were carelessly named by people who never went — "
" Natural Bridge !" shouts the brakeman, and we hurriedly gather
up our baggage and alight, with perhaps the most pleasurable antici-
pations of the whole trip.
It is two miles from the railway back into the broken hill country,
where the Natural Bridge spans one of the mountain streams. Hacks
from the hotel awaited the train, and our party had soon begun the
drive. A short distance brought us out upon a sort of ledge, where,
some hundreds of feet directly beneath us, we could see the noble
James, deep, wide and glossy, forcing its way along in the dignity of
fullness and strength. On the other side a great hill rose from the
water, and as we attained higher and higher levels, other ridge-like sum-
mits appeared behind, each more savage and lonely than the preced-
ing.
The road is good and winds prettily among the hills, between a
gulf on one side and tangled brush slopes on the other. It was with
pleasing suddenness, too, that we emerged at last upon the broad lawns
and parks of the hotel property, with its array of handsome dormitories,
and its groups of smaller pleasure buildings, summer-houses and gardens.
It was supper-time, and we were content for that night to sit on the
veranda, listen to the ballroom music, breathe the cool, balsamic air,
and sleep the sleep of weariness.
Breakfast was no sooner despatched next morning, however, than
we hastened to satisfy our curiosity as to this great bridge " not built
with hands," which justly ranks among America's " seven wonders."
The lawns are cleared around the head of a shallow ravine, the
extreme upper point of which is occupied by an enormous mineral
50
THE NATURAL BRIDGE.
51
spring and fish basin. Down the ravine from the spring goes a well-
graded pathway, which quickly disappears in the woods standing along
the tumbling cascades of a brook that traverses the estate, and we
follow it gleefully until it has descended three or four hundred feet into
the leafy screen and rocky seclusion of one of Appalachia's most lovely
glens. Prue has been sauntering on ahead, and turns a corner. As she
does so we see her lift her head, a wide-eyed glow of surprise illumines
her fair face, and she utters a little exclamation of delight. A step
forward and we stand by her side and share her excitement — the bridge
is before us!
The first impression is the lasting one — its majesty ! It stands
alone. There is nothing to distract the eye. The first point of view is
at sufficient distance, and somewhat above the level of the foundation.
Solid walls of rock and curtaining foliage guide the vision straight to
the narrows where the arch springs colossal from side to side. Whatever
questions may arise as to its origin, there is nothing hidden or mysteri-
ous in its appearance. The material of the walls is the material of the
bridge. Its piers are braced against the mountains, its enormous key-
stone bears down with a weight which holds all the rest immovable, yet
which does not look ponderous. Every part is exposed to our view at a
glance, and all parts are so proportionate to one another and to their
surroundings, — so simple and comparable to the human structures with
which we are familiar, that the effect upon our minds is not to stun, but
to satisfy completely our sense of the beauty of curve and upright,
grace and strength drawn upon a magnificent scale. " It is so massive,"
exclaims Mr. Charles Dudley Warner, " so high, so shapely, the abut-
ments rise so solidly and spring into the noble arch with such grace and
power ! . , . Through the arch is the blue sky; over the top is the
blue sky ; great trees try in vain to reach up to it, bushes and vines drape
and soften its outlines, but do not conceal its rugged massiveness. It is
still in the ravine, save for the gentle flow of the stream, and the bridge
seems as much an emblem of silence and eternity as the Pyramids."
Descending further the path cut along the base of the cliffs, which,
as one writer has said, arise " with the decision of a wall, but without
its uniformity — massive, broken, beautiful, and supplying a most admir-
able foreground." We advance under the arch, and gaze straight up at
its under side which is from sixty to ninety feet wide. It is almost two
hundred feet above the stony bed of Cedar creek, but Baily doesn't
remember this, and fancies he can hurl a pebble to the ceiling. Vain
youth ! Even gentle Prue laughs at him, and the swallows weaving
their airy flight in and out from sunlight to shadow, fearlessly swoop
lower and twitter more loudly, deriding his foolish ambition.
Crossing the gay torrent on a foot-bridge, we wandered up the creek
a mile or more, past Hemlock island ; past the cave where saltpetre was
procured for making powder, in 1812, and again during the Confederate
struggle, and even penetrated the low portal within which a " lost "river
murmurs and echoes to our ears its unseen history, as it plunges through
52
THE SALTPETRE CAVE ON CEDAR CREEK.
53
the dark recesses of its subterranean course ; and the farther we went the
more rugged, thickly wooded and charmingly untamed was the gulch.
Finally the walls closed in altogether, but finding a boat we crossed to a
stairway of stone leading to Lace Water falls, where the stream leaps a
hundred feet, falling in a dazzling deshabille of rainbow-tinted bubbles
and spray.
The Bridge seen from this (the upper) side is imposing, and its
magnitude is perhaps more striking ; but on the whole it is not so effect-
ive, regarded as an object by itself, as when studied from below.
Harriet Martineau, who once visited the spot, and has written enthusias-
tically of it in the second volume of her "Retrospect of Western
Travel " (1838), declares that she found most pleasure in looking at the
Bridge from the path just before reaching its base. "The irregular
arch," she writes, "is exquisitely tinted with every shade of gray and
brown ; while trees encroach from the sides and overhang from the top,
between which and the arch there is an additional depth of fifty-six feet.
It was now early in July ; the trees were in their brightest and thickest
foilage ; and the tall beeches under the arch contrasted their verdure with
the gray rock, and received the gilding of the sunshine as it slanted into
the ravine, glittering in the drips from the arch, and in the splashing
and tumbling waters of Cedar creek, which ran by our feet."
Nevertheless, if you are willing to regard the great arch only as a
part of the ensemble, and to take into just account what is around and
beyond it as a proper part of the scene, I advise you to place yourself
a hundred yards above and then observe what a charming picture of
glistening torrent, flower-hung rocks, stately trees and far away mountain
crests is framed into its oval ; and how incomparable is the colossal
frame itself — what sublimity of design — what wealth of decoration and
lavishness of color !
It cannot be too strongly insisted upon, however, that while this
curious product of water erosion (slowly turning a cave into a long
tunnel and then, by the falling of the most of the roof, leaving only an
arch-like segment of the tunnel in the shape of a bridge) is the central
attraction, there are a thousand other sources of enjoyment and
pastime at this pilgrimage-point.
For those who are content with rest and gossip, fresh air by day and
dancing at night, the fine new hotel offers every inducement for a
prolonged stay. To the larger class which seeks more active pleasure
during the summer vacation, a wide range of good roads and interesting
country is open for exploration. " The Bridge," says the admirable little
guide-book issued by the hotel people, "connects two of five round-
topped mountains that rise boldly from the great Valley of Virginia, near
the confluence of James and North rivers. These have been named
Lebanon, Mars hill, Mount Jefferson, Lincoln heights, and Cave
mountain, and embraced in the park. Private carriage-roads, nearly
ten miles long, lead around or over them, and give through arches cut in
54
the forest, or from open spaces, a wonderful variety and extent of mount-
ain scenery.
"Eight hundred feet below the summit of Mt. Jefferson lie the
green valleys of the rivers. Eight miles to the east the Blue Ridge,
forest-covered and mist-crowned, rises to its greatest height, 4,300 feet
above the sea, and extends to north and south nearly one hundred
miles before it is lost in the dim distance- A little to the left the glint of
broken granite alone shows where the river bursts through, and at* the
right the crest lowers so that the Peaks of Otter may overlook. At the
south, Purgatory mountain, and at the north. House mountain, throw their
immense masses half across the plain. Against the western sky North
mountain, the * Endless mountain ' of the Indians, lies cold and colorless.
In the lifted central space of this great amphitheatre the park is located."
An old turnpike crosses upon the Bridge, but amid the apparently
unbroken forest, few persons would discover it till told by the driver.
In one of his inimitable articles in Harper s Magazine, befoYe the war,
Porte Crayon gives a ludicrous account of how his party behaved on the
brink of the chasm : and Miss Martineau confesses how her search was
baffled. " While the stage rolled and jolted," she writes, "along the
extremely bad road, Mr. L. and I went prying about the whole area of
the wood, poking our horses' noses into every thicket and between any
two pieces of rock, that we might be sure not to miss our object, the
driver smiling after us whenever he could spare attention from his own
not very easy task of getting his charge along. With all my attention I
could see no precipice, and was concluding to follow the road without
more vagaries, when Mr. L., who was a little in advance, waved his
whip as he stood beside his horse, and said, " Here is the Bridge !" I
then perceived that we were nearly over it, the piled rocks on either
hand forming a barrier which prevents a careless eye from perceiving
the ravine which it spans. I turned to the side of the road, and rose in
my stirrup to look over ; but I found it would not do. . . . The only
way was to go down and look up ; though where the bottom could be
was past my imagining, the view from the top seeming to be of foliage
below — foliage forever."
The driveways do not cease at the Bridge, but continue by an
elevated course which gives some remarkable outlooks, and takes in
various notable points.
The hotel is open all winter, and there are few days in this southern
latitude when it would not be entirely comfortable to visit all the points
I have mentioned, and see the Bridge under a grimmer aspect, truly,
than when mantled in the garlands of summer, yet with none of its
grandeur diminished.
"Well," remarked Prue, when I had read over to her what I have
written, ''Y do think you have made about as great a faihwe as I have
ever seen. Why you havn't begun to tell of half the good times we
had at that perfectly lovely place ! "
55
THE ARBOR-VIT^ TREES, AND GIANTS' STAIRWAY.
56
" I know it," I confess with humility.
"Well, at least," she went on, crushing my poor effort, "I would
describe the gorge seen by moonlight. Don't you remember, Theo, that
evening when we left the hop, stole away from the crowd on the
piazzas and ran down the dewy lawn together ? "
"You looked like a fairy that night, Prue, in your floating lace."
"And then how we crept by those big ogreish arbor-vitae trees, and
how you laughed at me because I was a little timid in that dreadfully
dark shadow under the crag ; and how we tried to hear words in the
tinkle of rivulets down the ledges ? Then, don't you remember with what
a startle of delfght we came in sight of the ravine, and you said the
Bridge must have been carved out of silver and ebony ? Can't you tell
about that ? "
" No, Prue — and I shouldn't like to try. Let those who come after
us find it out for themselves as one of a hundred novel joys which
await the sojourner at the Natural Bridge."
X.
THE NEW CITY OF ROANOKE.
On the Bank of the James.— The Gap.— Buchanan's Iron Works.— A Town Saved by its
Captors.— Crossing to the Valley of the Roanoke. — Baily's Triumphant
Quotation. — Beginning and raison d'etre of Roanoke. — History
of the Consolidated Railways. — Amenities of Roanoke. —
Machine Works. — Iron Furnaces. — Stock-yards. —
Minor Factories.— The Great Hotel.—
Sunset Pictures.
Rolling slowly across the lofty iron bridge which carries the track
over the James at the Natural Bridge station, we skirt the base of the
mountains on the southern bank, and follow closely all the windings of
the stream. Not only is it impossible for the railway to leave its mar-
gin, for the most part, but through long distances it has been needful to
dig into the foot of the precipitous hillside in order to make room for the
tracks. On the opposite side run the tracks of the Richmond and Alle-
ghany Railroad, following the line of the disused canal, whose broken
dams still ruffle the current, and whose ruined locks are sinking into
shapeless decay.
As we approach Buchanan, the hills grow even steeper, and crowd
upon the river so closely that its current is greatly deepened and con-
fined, and rushes with noisy turbulence along a lane of gigantic syca-
mores, willows and other water-loving trees, toward the gap where the
James bursts its way through the lofty cross-range of Purgatory mount-
ain. This gap is one which will especially interest not only the scenery
hunter but the geologist; for in the northern wall of the gorge, where
the river has exposed a vertical face of rock of great height and breadth,
it is easy to see how the rocks there have been bent upward into an arch
as high as the hill, the concentric strata in which can be counted almost
57
JAMES RIVER GORGE.
58
at a glance. Every exposed cliff and railway-cutting gives evidence to
the observant eye of how the substance of these confused knolls and
ridges has been contorted; but it is rare that so plain a cross-section of
folding is offered as in this exceedingly picturesque gap.
Between Waynesboro and Buchanan, the town which lies just above
the gap, many incidents of historical interest might have been enumer-
ated, and the names mentioned of many great men who were its sons;
NEAR BUCHANAN.
but no consequential operations of either army in the late war occurred
there. At the latter town however, began a series of very memorable
scenes.
On the evening of the 14th of June, 1864, Buchanan was noisy with
furnaces, forges, foundries and mills, especially the powerful branch of
Tradegar Iron Works, where cannon, ammunition, and other iron-sup-
plies were cast for the Confederate government. Here were flouring
and blanket mills also, and in the neighborhood lay farms producing food
and forage for the army. In the town, as guard, was McCausland with
the cavalry which had just come back from disasters before Sheridan,
Demoralized and weak, these troopers were dismayed to hear that the
Yankees were just across the river in great force, and would capture
them all in a hurry. The river was easily fordable here, but McCaus-
land (the same who set fire to Chambersburg and several Maryland vil-
lages), saw fit to burn the bridge against the protest of the citizens.
From the burning bridge houses caught fire, and the whole town would
have been destroyed had not the Yankee soldiers turned firemen and
helped extinguish the flames. This salvage accomplished, the captors
(Hunter's fifteen thousand raiders) destroyed the ordnance factories
59
which were so valuable to the Confederacy, and pushed toward the Peaks
of Otter, " at a great expense of pioneer labor and bush-fighting."
The James river, at Buchanan, passes close to its southern watershed;
and having crossed the ridges which closely beset the town in that direc-
tion we are free from the grasp of the sterile and jungle-covered hills and
descend into the valley of the Roanoke, through the farming and fruit
raising districts of Houston (the boy-home of Sam Houston, of Texas
CROZIER IRON WORKS.
fame), Troutville and Cloverdale. Seventy thousand apple trees were
planted in Cloverdale alone during 1883; and—
" Cut it short ! " Baily calls out with that disrespect for his elders
which will be the death of him some day. "Here's our guide-book
telling us all about it. Listen to this:
"We enter the Roanoke valley amid scenes of surpassing beauty.
The setting sun purples the tops of the mountains and throws its slanting
rays over the rich field and pasture lands; the twilight steals out of the
forest and dims the blue thread of mist along the James; the cattle low
in the shaded lanes, the sheep-bells tinkle on the hills; ^olian wmds
ring among the dusky trees,
' Night draws her mantle and pins it with a star ! '
"The city of Roanoke blazes up ahead like an illumination; red-
mouthed furnace-chimneys lift like giant torches above the plain; the roar
of machinery, the whistle of engines, the ceaseless hum of labor and of
60
A MOUNTAIN RIFT NEAR ROANOKE.
61
life in the very heart of a quiet, mountain-locked valley ! We roll into
the finest depot in the state, and are escorted to a hotel that would do
credit to the proudest city. We tourists go to bed dumbfounded ! "
"That's the way to do it !" cries Baily, closing his book in tri-
umph.
And that's just the way we did.
The nucleus of this city of Roanoke was a small village known as
the " Lick," where a salt lick, or saline impregnation of a piece of
marshy land, originally attracted the wild animals of the vicinity, and,
with the advance of settlement, the domestic animals of the pioneers.
It was on a post-road, and had a tavern, store and post-office, but is now
simply a suburb tenanted wholly by negroes. The country round about
was exceptionally rich in agricultural land and forest growth, and soon
attracted settlement and cultivation. On the opening of the Virginia and
Tennessee Railway, in November, 1852, the business of the neighbor-
hood naturally gravitated to the immediate vicinity of the line, and a
town was started about the railway station called " Big Lick," half a
mile distant from " Old Lick," which finally became a hamlet of about 600
people.
In 1870, the Virginia and Tennessee, by consolidation with its
connecting lines, became the Atlantic, Mississippi and Ohio Railroad,
and this having become embarrassed in its finances was purchased by a
syndicate of capitalists in Philadelphia, most of whom were already inter-
ested in the Shenandoah Valley Railroad, then in course of construction.
It was decided to continue the latter line to a junction with the former
at Big Lick (achieved in June, 1882), and operate them in association.
The name of the Atlantic, Mississippi and Ohio Railroad was changed
to Norfolk and Western. An operating arrangement for twenty-five
years was concluded in September, 1881 with the East Tennessee, Vir-
ginia and Georgia Railroad, and its leased lines, and the Shenandoah
Valley Railroad, and the entire system of 2,203 miles of railway has
since that date been worked in entire harmony in all matters of general
traffic, as the Virginia, Tennessee and Georgia Air Line. Economy
and efficiency necessitated some central point for the control of the
Norfolk and Western and Shenandoah Valley Railroads, the head-quar-
ters of their direction, position of the shops for construction and repair
of equipment-, and residence of many of their employees. A company was
therefore formed, which gradually bought several thousand acres of land
around the junction, nearly all of which was farm land, procured the
legal authority and laid out a town site, which was named Roanoke
after the river which flows half a mile southward.
This was in the fall of 1881. Now Roanoke is a town of lively busi-
ness appearance, and of new, modern, and in many cases very handsome
houses, with a population of seven or eight thousand and more coming.
Its streets are lighted by gas, and the whole town is supplied with sweet,
pure water drawn from "Big Spring" a mile and a half away, which is
62
63
one of the most picturesque spots in the valley of the Roanoke river,
whose lively current purls near by. The town contains a number of
churches, good schools, a library association, an opera house and various
other means of mental and moral culture, as well as of material progress ;
while the presence of so many executive officers and their families, pre-
supposes a society of more intelligence and social experience than is
usually observed in so new a town.
"The requirements of such a population," says a recent report
shown me by the indefatigable Baily, " almost entirely consumers, and
the position of the city, at such an important railway junction, surrounded
by an agricultural territory of such great productiveness, with abundance
of iron ores on every side, vast supplies of coal and coke within easy dis-
tance, and such a nucleus of manufacturing industry already established,
seem to confirm the promise of a prosperity built upon the most solid
foundation, and capable of
indefinite expansion."
The largest element in
the progress of Roanoke
was the building of the Ro-
anoke Machine Works,
which owns a large tract of
land and has constructed
extensive buildings in the
angle between the two
roads. These buildings
consist of brick shops,
engine houses]"and mills,
BIG SPRING, NEAR ROANOKE.
64
locomotives, stationary engines, cars of every grade and description,
covering many thousands of square feet, and supplied with all the
ponderous and complicated machinery necessary to make all sorts of
bridges, and all kinds of cast or forged iron work. This does not mean
merely that the machinery or cars may be put together here ; but,
except a few specialties, every part of the locomotive or car, from the
wheels to the last ornament, is made and fitted as well as "set up"
here. It would be out of place in a pamphlet of this nature to give an
extended description of such works, to which these railways look for
nearly all their rolling stock ; but the visitor to Roanoke will find it
well worth his while to go through them.
The raw material of iron and steel used is largely supplied by the
Crozier Steel and Iron Company, whose blast-furnace is a quarter of a
mile away, and another object of interest to tourists, who often go at
night to witness the thrilling spectacle of drawing the molten iron from
HOTEL ROANOKE.
the furnace into the molds where it will be cast in "pigs." This com-
pany derives its ores (brown hematite) mainly from the upland mines
owned by it near Blue Ridge station, ten miles eastward, and from the
Houston mines, fifteen miles northward. The yield sometimes reaches
a hundred tons a day, and the greater part is marketed in Pennsylvania
in successful competition with local manufacturers. Another similar
enterprise is the Rohrer Iron Company, which owns extensive deposits
of high grade limonite ore half a dozen miles south of town. This
property is reached by a narrow gauge railway, which may ultimately
be extended through to the Danville and New River Railroad, in North
Carolina, and at its terminus in West Roanoke the company owns land
upon which it now stores and ships its products, and will probably con-
struct a furnace. Near there are the Roanoke stock-yards, where
abundant conveniences for the transferrence of cattle are provided,
together with a hotel for the drovers and traders having telegraphic com-
munication with northern markets.
65
In addition to these large concerns many smaller ones contribute to
the prosperity of the place ; such as tobacco factories, lumber-working
mills, cigar-making shops, spoke factories, bottling works, and the like.
So rapid and persistent has been the growth of the little city, the site of
which three years ago was all a wheatfield, that although the Town
Company has expended $600,000, its profits have been very satisfactory.
For the equestrian, the vicinity of Roanoke is full of opportunities.
A hard, even road leads away eastward over the ridge, where most of the
handsome homes of the residents are built, and brings us to the Big
TINKER AND MILL
MOUNTAINS, ROANOKE.
Spring, a fountain-
head of water suf-
ficiently powerful '
to run the huge
wheel of a flour mill, and to
supply the city with a plenti-
tude of the purest water.
To the westward other roads
wind away into the hills. Un-
der the pilotage of two genial citizens we made a saddle journey of dis-
covery in this direction. We found, hidden away in the peaceful seclu-
Wn
66
7. — A SHADY PORCH.
HOTEL ROANOKE.
2. — MAIN STAIRWAY.
sion of a pretty valley, the Hollins Institute, a popular seminary for
young ladies, always filled with merry and bright-eyed maidens from
every state of the South, under tuition of an excellent corps of instructors.
Two miles beyond we came upon one of those sermons in stones which
are as an open page to the geologist — a rift in the ledge where a little
fretful stream poured down between the rocky jaws over the ruins of a
log dam and past the remnants of a flume and mill — as pretty a bit of
rockscape as one will find in these mountains. Here the pent-up waters
of a vast inland lake have some time burst through and scattered the frag-
ments of the massive gateway right and left through the valley. We
67
found just time to make a hasty sketch, and retraced our steps to the
Institute, beneath the hospitable roof of which we tarried that night.
Returning to Roanoke in the morning by the mountain road, our
artist halted to add the bold outlines of Tinker and Mill mountains to
his sketch-book, and we wished, when we drew rein at the hotel an hour
later, that our ride had been twice as long.
The three buildings which catch the eye of the traveler, and sur-
prise him, are the railway station and its " low-ceiled, dainty " eating-
house in the Queen Anne style — though, as Charles Dudley Warner
LOBBY OF THE HOTEL ROANOKE.
said of it, that queen probably never sat in so taseful a dining-room or had
so good a dinner ; the railway head-quarters, falling in a cataract of
peaked roofs and balconied fronts down the slope of the street; and the
splendid hotel crowning the hill in the midst of lawns, parterres of
flowers and ceaseless fountains. In the presence of the accompanying
illustrations it would be superfluous to describe their outward appearance.
Interiorly — to speak now of the Hotel Roanoke, — the wood-work is
hard pine, finished in the natural grain; the furniture ash and cherry,
and all the arrangements tasteful as well as commodious. The parlor is
as pretty a room as you will find in many a mile, and the dining-room
light and cheerful, with small tables and growing plants. Under the
same management as the Luray Inn and a leading hotel in Philadelphia,
the table and service are of a high order; and I do not know a better
resting place for the tourist than this. All this may seem high praise
for a hotel, but it is given ungrudgingly. We spent a good many pleas-
ant days there and paid for them squarely; hence I can say what I please,
and sum it up in the candid opinion that Hotel Roanoke has nothing to
approach it (save at Luray) between Philadelphia and Florida.
68
There was a certain corner of one of the upper piazzas a little out of
the way, where we used to like to sit an hour or so after tea, smoking
our evening cigars, watching the glories of the sunset, and discussing
things in a hopeful strain that would have vexed Michiavelli to the soul.
The mountains stand in an irregular circle about Roanoke, none too
near for the best effect, and the western view is an especially fine one.
The lowering orb of light sinks grandly behind the line of mountain
wall, across whose serrations its last rays gush in a blinding effulgence
which slowly pales away through every rosy and nacreous tint into the
sweet twilight of the summer night. I remember a remark by Prue,
that the day here was like the fabled dolphin which in its death put on
a shimmering robe of swiftly changing colors, and so passed away glori-
ously. Nor is the beauty all in the sky, for the foreground is, nearest, the
picturesque structures of the town, then a billowy stretch of green and
bosky knolls, and finally the obliquely retreating array of the Alleghan-
ies, where
" headland after headland flame
Far into the rich heart of the West."
Sitting thus one evening, I am asked :
" Were you ever at Norfolk ? "
" Oh, yes." I reply, "and had a capital week of it, too."
" Did you pass over the Norfolk and Western between here and
there ? "
" Pretty nearly; I came as far as Lynchburg."
" Tell us about it," is Prue's request. " I feel a greaEt deal of inter-
est in Norfolk on account of its strawberries."
"And I on account of its peanuts," mimics Baily, at which the
young woman near him makes a little motte."
69
XI.
NORFOLK AND PETERSBURG.
Virginia's Great Seaport.— Commercial Advantages.— Colonial History.— Revival after
the War.— Cotton. — Peanuts.— Garden Truck. — Oysters.— General Supplies.—
Lambert's Point Coal Wharves.— Old Point Comfort and the Harbor.—
Hampton.— Ocean View.— Virginia Beach. — The Dismal
Swamp. — Baily's Impertinence. — Petersburg. —
Forts Hell and Damnation.— Peach-trees
as Monuments of Battle.
" Norfolk," I say, in response to the question which closed the last
chapter, "is the most business-like city in Virginia, and next to the largest.
It has a right to be so, because of its situation. It is just at the mouth of
James river and the Chesapeake bay, and has a large, deep and well
protected harbor, where any kind of shipping can enter without delay or
danger. The government has had a navy yard at Portsmouth (which is an
THE MARKET SQUARE AT NORFOLK.
attachment of Norfolk) for many years; and Hampton roads, just below
the city, is the favorite ground for naval reviews, etc. She has lines of
ocean steamers to Liverpool, and to Boston, Providence and New York.
Two or three lines of steamboats connect her with Baltimore, of which
the celebrated 'Bay Line' is the best known; and steamers run regu-
larly to Washington, Richmond, and up all the lesser rivers, as well as
southward through the canals. She is the terminus of a railway to the
southern coast-region, and of this great east-and-west highway — the
Norfolk and Western. She has every commercial advantage she could
wish, therefore, and a clientele of about fifty thousand people."
" Isn't it an old, old town?" Madame Prue inquires.
"Very old. It was almost the first spot upon which colonists
set foot, and has been recognized as a settlement for two centuries or
70
71
more. In Norfolk, to-day, you may find some of the quaintest and
most typical homes of the old fashion which remain anywhere in
America; and I do not know a seaport on our coast more picturesque
along its water front. It is a charming place for a stranger to stroll
about in, and, when he becomes acquainted with them, he finds the
people warm-hearted, intelligent and delightful. There was surely a
pleasant omen in the fact that the first settlers of prominence were
named Wise and Thorogood ! "
"Norfolk was an important point during the rebellion, if I remem-
ber aright."
" It was the great naval centre. The city was not destroyed, only
paralyzed, by the war, and after its close the citizens returned and began
to pick up again the threads they had dropped. They found it needful,
however, in the new order of things, to make many innovations.
OLD CHURCH AT NORFOLK.
Among the first attempted was dealing in cotton. Started by Mayor
William Lamb's ventures in 1865, it advanced until, in 1874, the rail-
ways began giving through bills of lading via Norfolk to foreign destina-
tions. Then followed arrangements for the proper handling of cotton at
this port. Steam compressors of great power were built, a cotton exchange
was organized, with every facility for business parallel with the New
York exchange, and a great many men gained their livelihood by trading
in or handling this staple. During the season of 1882-3 nealy 800,000
bales came to Norfolk, about half of which was consigned through on
foreign bills of lading. Norfolk is now the third cotton port in the
United States in point of receipts, and second only to New Orleans in
point of exports to Great Britain. This result has been possible by the
concentration there of lines of railway transportation for receiving, and
of ocean steamers for distributing. Among the former, the Norfolk and
Western brings three-fifths of the total receipts, gathered from as far
73
inland'as' Memphis and Atlanta. Now, who was it expressed an interest
in peanuts ?"
" Madame Prue," says Baily, with unblushing effrontery.
" Well, peanuts, next to cotton, make the largest item of Norfolk's
trade. They have been grown since the war in all the tidewater counties
of Virginia, and somewhat also in North Carolina and Tennessee. The
farmers choose a light soil, manure with marl, plant in May, ' cultivate '
the rows of plants assiduously during the summer, and harvest in
October. The vines, after being thrown out of the ground, are stacked
in the field and left for from ten to twenty days, when both vine and nuts
will be cured. The nuts are picked and sent to market; the vines are
saved to be fed to cattle. The peanuts are sold to buyers for factories in
Norfolk — there are factories also in Petersburg and several other places
— where they are sorted into commercial grades of quality, and put
through machinery which cleans them thoroughly of all earth, and
polishes the shells into a fit condition to be roasted. These processes are
very interesting, and anyone visiting the city ought to try to see the oper-
ation. During the past season the crop amounted to a million-and-a-half
TERMINAL WHARVES AT LAMBERT S POINT.
of bushels; and the yield of the present year
(1884) is expected to be two-and-a-quarter
millions, two-thirds of which is produced in
the Old Dominion."
"Now tell Mr. Baily something about
his friends, the cabbages," remarks my wife,
sweetly.
" Meaning garden truck, generally, I
suppose. He'd better read Mr. E. P. Roe's
book about small fruits, which deals princi-
pally with that district and covers the case.
In the spring, enormous quantities of vege-
tables and fresh fruit are sent] from here to
northern cities, as everybody knows who
does any shopping in New York or New
England — eh, Prue ? "
" Certainly, and we get no end of oys-
ters from there, too."
"You bet!" Baily exclaims. "Who
doesn't know Norfolk oysters — especially
the rich, rare and racy Lynnhaven Bays ! " ~-
" Well, those are the chief ' points ' on Norfolk as a business city.
73
How she becomes a supply depot for a wide extent of country you can
easily understand from what I have said of her position and traffic facili-
ties. She has just had completed the construction of splendid piers,
IN FORTRESS MONROE.
elevators, coal-shutes and^other,^,terminal,^facilities at Lambert's Point,
four miles from town, whereby the Norfolk and Western Railroad can
receive "and transmit freight from ships, not only at convenience and
expense far more advantageous than at present, but can handle the
74
unlimited quantities of coal which are now being mined in the moun-
tains and carried to the seaboard for use by steamers there, and for
export to distant markets."
" Any chance to have a good time in Norfolk? " Baily asks, biting
off the end of a big cigar, but neglecting to give me one until I remind
him of the impropriety of his conduct.
" Good time ? Why, of course. Besides all the opportunities for
pleasure 'within its gates,' that belong to a lively southern city, there
are the peculiar local opportunities which its proximity to the ocean and
bay afford."
" Dear me! " murmurs, as if to herself, "what fine phrases ! "
Prue has a small book in her hand and is not listening very atten-
tively, but I don't mind; I am used to it.
"For instance?" Baily inquires.
OLD POINT COMFORT, FROM SOLDIERS' HOME.
" Well, just listen to a paragraph or two out of a little pamphlet that
somebody has issued in regard^to the attractions in that neighborhood :"
" Passing from Norfolk to the ocean, the traveler sees the Naval
Hospital, and the spacious and magnificent Navy Yard at Gosport, which
the Federal troops attempted to destroy when they evacuated the city in
1861. Their success was only partial, and the works have since been
in active operation. In this yard the Confederate ram, * Merrimac-
Virginia,' was built, which destroyed the frigates 'Congress' and
' Constitution ' in Hampton Roads, and had the famous fight with
the 'Monitor.'
"Other points of interest are Old Fort Norfolk, constructed in
1812, where a magazine of supplies was afterwards established; Craney
Island, where the engagements of two wars were fought ; Sewell's
Point, named for one of the earliest colonists ; the Rip Raps and Fort-
ress Monroe.
' ' Other points of interest lie still further below : there are Lynnhaven
Bay, celebrated for oysters ; Cobb's Island, famous for bathing ; Cape
Charles and Henry, and other historic places.
"The Hygeia Hotel, Old Point Comfort, Virginia, is situated at the
confluence of the Chesapeake Bay and Hampton Roads. It is washed
on three sides by broad sheets of salt water. The climate, in conse-
quence, is mild and soft during the winter and spring, and in the fall
vegetation continues untouched by frost long after the inland has been
blighted. The heat of summer is mitigated by the constant sea breeze
and the superior ventilation of the building.
75
" The hotel itself is new and spacious, accommodating one thousand
guests and open all the year. The guests have numerous amusements —
fishing, sailing, bathing, boating. One minute's walk will bring one to
Fortress Monroe, the largest fort in the United States ; a quarter of an
hour in another direction to the National Cemetery, the Soldiers' Home,
VIEWS FROMyDOCK PAVILION, HOTEL WARWICK.
and the Hampton Normal and Agricultural School for Indians and
colored people."
"There's at least one important omission in that list," cries the watch-
ful and well-informed Baily.
"What is that?"
76
"Newport News and the Hotel Warwick, where the Old Dominion
steamers from New York land. The writer speaks of the fight between
the * Monitor ' and the * Merrimac ' as a feature of interest at Old
Point Comfort; but it belongs much more to its rival, for that fight
occurred right off Newport News, and a long wharf has been built out
from the shore directly over the wreck of the frigate 'Cumberland,'
which was sunk by the Confederate ram early in the encounter. The
Warwick is a new hotel, of brick, very ornamental within, and in general
BOWLING HALL, HOTEL WARWICK
quite as handsome as the Hygeia. It stands
close to the beach, commands a fine^view of ;;the
shipping in Hampton Roads, and has beautiful
and historically interesting surroundings. It's a
toss-up with me whether I'd choose the Hygeia or Hotel Warwick, if
I were lucky enough to be ready to go to either just yet."
"Are there no seaside pleasure-places on the Norfolk side of the
water?" Prue asks me.
"Oh, yes. There's Ocean View, for example, ten miles north of
town, where for many a year the beauty and chivalry of Norfolk have gone
out to spend a week or an hour, as chance served,, on the shore of Hamp-
ton roads, fishing, and eating crabs all day, and eating crabs and dancing
all night. Little open-car trains run back and forth every hour or two
during the warmer two-thirds of the year, and it is no end nice after a
warm day to take the girl of your heart, dash out there in the cool of the
evening, meet a lot of friends in the spacious ball-room, where special
dress is no object, and then skip home, one of a jolly company, by the ten
o'clock train.
" But that is not on the ocean, is it, in spite of its name ? "
" No, you get a glimpse of it down through the Capes, but for an
interview with the great briny itself, you must go out to Virginia Beach.
That is twenty miles due east of the city, and reached by a narrow-gauge
railway lately built. The depot is the same as the magnificent new sta-
tion of the Norfolk and, Western, which is the admiration of all who
77
enjoy fine architecture; and the ride is an entertaining run through a dis-
trict having many historical associations. Then the beach itself (you
come upon it very suddenly and strikingly) is as fine as you could see
anywhere in the world. Miles and miles up and down the coast stretches
this mall of hard sand and those flashing lines of brilliant breakers. It is
a wonderful sight, because of its vastness — the whole breadth of the open,
unhindered ocean in front, the mystery of the unbroken and apparently
primitive forest behind, and, between, this golden and white margin of
coast, straight as a ray of light and far reaching as the eye can follow ! "
"Any hotel there?"
" A very fine one of huge size and pleasant equipment. It stands as
near the surf as safety will allow, and has several acres of piazzas and
SCENE ON VIRGINIA BEACH.
* pavilion ' attached. I believe a battalion drill could be held in that
great pavilion, which is crowded during the day with excursionists from
town, and haunted at night by the sensible few who wait for the late train
home, or by the habitues at the hotel, who stroll in the half-light on the
seaward side, watching the luminous surges. I never missed you more,
Prue, or felt that you had lost so much in one evening, as when I spent
those twilight hours alone at Virginia Beach."
"Now," said Baily, after a complimentary pause. "Tell us about
the trip hither,"
" You leave Norfolk comfortably in the morning, go through Peters-
burg at noon, get to Lynchburg toward sunset and come on here to
Roanoke for tea."
" So the time-table tells me," was Rally's dry retort. "What is
there to see along the road ? "
" Well, south-eastern Virginia is flat, truly, and less entertaining than
the mountain country; and if one has to travel through its pines and
scrub oaks for several days in succession, as I did when I went along the
coast last year, he gets extremely tired of it; but though 'flat,' the ride
westward from Norfolk is by no means 'stale and unprofitable.' As
soon as you come past Suffolk, a dozen miles inland, you start upon
what I dare say is the longest railway tangent in the world, for there
the track runs ^absolutely ,straight_for fifty-six miles. You could look
78
HAMPTON ROADS.
unimpeded from Suffolk to Petersburg, if perspective and curvature of
the earth permitted."
" How is this tangent possible ? "
"The land is poor, or half submerged, and the region almost unin-
habited. The first few miles is run through the northern edge of the
Great Dismal Swamp, and is a monument of skillful engineering and
patient work, the credit of which belongs to General and ex-Senator
Mahone. That swamp, by the way, is something worth taking much
trouble to see."
" How do you get at it?"
" Stop at Suffolk (unless you can get a train which will let you off at
the right spot), and walk two miles down the track to the Jericho Canal
crossing. There you will find some negro (get Ike " Chalk " Winslow if
you can) who will take you in a cypress canoe through the long, narrow,
overgrown canal as far as you like. To Lake Drummond, the great
pond which fills the interior of the swamp, is ten miles, but by starting
early you can go there and get back by dark. It is an extremely interest-
ing trip through the most novel scenes ; and if your boatman is one of
the old swampers, who has spent his life in cutting and boating juniper
logs and cypress shingles from the recesses of the vast morass, you can
draw from him many a legend and bit of slave-history or curiosity of
woodland experience."
" Are they not arranging to reclaim a large part of the swamp," Prue
enquires.
"Yes, but that is too long a story to go into now. The whole area of
the morass (which contains about 150,000 acres) is from fifteen to twenty
feet above the level of the tide, and it only requires to cut certain drains
79
80
in order that the water may run off. It is held back now by the spongy
peat and the tangled masses of vegetation, roots, buried logs, mosses
and ferns, which cover the real bottom with a layer many feet in depth,
out of which the water cannot find its way. A plan of drainage was
sketched by Washington, and a company formed before the Revolution
to carry it out ; but the wars and other matters prevented. Now this
same old corporation has been revived, and the reclamation of the
northern half of the swamp will no doubt be made within a short period."
pais*"' ^ -"^*
CANOEING IN THE DISMAL SWAMP.
A SUFFOLK FARM-HOUSE.
The next point to which I " called the attention of my listeners," as
the preachers say, was Petersburg, where the railroad from Richmond
to Weldon and the Carolina coast cities crosses the Norfolk and West-
ern. Petersburg is the most important town in south-central Virginia
and has a wide reputation through its tobacco manufacturing, for
it is the centre of a tobacco growing region. The factories there are
devoted chiefly to the making of " plug'' chewing tobacco, and strangers
can easily get a sight of the interesting processes and machinery by
which it is prepared. The trade of Petersburg is almost wholly in
81
exporting, and one great house finds in Australia and the South Pacific
islands its largest market. The tobacco called for by that trade is strong,
black and compact beyond anything which is liked in America, and is
sent out in bond, to the disgust of the Internal Revenue Collector of the
District.
Petersburg is also a centre for the spinning of cotton and woolen
clothes ; for the grinding of sumac, the leaves of which reduced to a
powder have come, since the war, to have a high commercial value
as an agent in tanning fine kinds of leather. The gathering of these
leaves, which are extremely plentiful in the mountains, aiifords almost
the only means open to a large class of poverty-stricken backwoods-
men, for purchasing the few " store -goods " their simple ideas of life
require ; while to many a hard working wife and child, in better circum-
stances, the sumac gives pin-money which otherwise would be lacking.
Peanut mills, breweries, fertilizer factories and various other factories
flourish in Petersburg, where also is done a large jobbing business with
country merchants.
The chief interest in the place to the tourist, however, arises from its
history, both Colonial and that made in the more recent and deadly years
when Grant besieged it with the army of the Potomac, and Forts Hell
and Damnation earned their fiery titles. Room does not suffice to tell
FOOTPRINTS OK \\^i<
here the long story of how the Federal grip was slowly and relentlessly
tightened about the fated town, and how, day after day, week in and week
out, the city was under artillery fire. The tale can be read in any history,
or heard from a thousand witnesses in that region. The fortifications stand
in fairly good order, and are the object of every visitor's first interest.
Time and the plow have leveled some, but their contours may be traced,
by lines of peach trees if by no other sign, — trees planted by the soldiers
as they lay in the trenches and furtively nibbled the juicy fruit. Most
interesting of all is " the crater, " where that great mine was exploded
which was intended not only to make a breach but to destroy a garrison.
The railway passes just underneath it, and along the line of Grant's
front, where the terrific charge ensued which marked that farm-slope as
one of the bloodiest fields of the Civil war. A ghastly museum of relics
has been brought together at the crater, exhibiting with mute elo-
quence the awful fury of that hour.
XII.
IN THE VALLEY OF THE JAMES.
^4pproaching the Mountains. — War Recollections.— High Bridge. — Farmville and its
Colleges. — The Tobacco Region. — Lynchburg: a City of Terraces. — Railways
and Trade. — Tobacco Factories and Market. — Iron and Iron Mills. — " Side-
hill Critters." — Peaks of Otter. — Hunter's March upon Liberty. —
Railway Destruction as a Military Science. — Fighting in a Burning
Forest. — The Attack upon Lynchburg. — Hunter's Leisurely
Retreat. — Blue Ridge Springs. — The Pretty Girls
of Coyner's & Gishe's.
From Petersburg the road rises rapidly toward the mountains, and
passes a country replete with military associations.
Burkeville, the first station of consequence, and in the midst
of a fertile region, is the junction of the railway between Richmond
and Danville, and passengers from the West change cars here for
the capital of the state. Proceeding toward Farmville, the face of the
country grows less regular, the soil improves and interest grows. Every
station and roadway along this part of the line has its war story to tell.
Jetersville, Sailor's Creek, Fort Gregg, Five Forks, where the Confed-
eracy made its final fight, and Cumberland Church where, in a sharp skir-
mish, the Federal forces suffered their last repulse. Just beyond Cum-
berland Church is the High Bridge, which was in olden times the terror
of travelers, but is now an iron structure of the most massive character,
a mile long, spanning a depression once evidently the bed of a lake, but
now rich with corn and tobacco. The latter crop is the staple production
of the region, which is especially suited to it. From the High Bridge
a serenely beautiful landscape is spread before and beneath the eye; its
horizon formed by the varied outlines of the distant and always admir-
able Blue Ridge. In this vale, now so sunny and peaceful, happened
one of the most impulsive cavalry fights of the war, where horses dashed
breast to breast, and sabre clashed against sabre, in the fury of hand to
hand conflict.
Farmville, the centre of this fine agricultural region, is a community
not only of trade, but of peculiarly intelligent and cultivated people, typ-
ical of the best of those rural social ganglia which were the pride of Vir-
ginia under the old regime. Near here stand Hampden Sidney College
8B
and the Union Theological Seminary (Presbyterian), besides a popular
watering-place called the Farmville Lithia Springs,
Next comes Pamplin's Depot, where that celebrated clay pipe is
made — " the great nicotine absorber, which excels all the meerschaums of
the world." Not far beyond is Appomattox station, near that world-
renowned court house where the army of " tattered uniforms but bright
muskets " surrendered its flags to the Union. A little farther we emerge
from the hills which have gradually grown around us, to move out
upon the bank of the broad James river, and after following its picturesque
bendings a few miles, pull up in the union station, under the walls of
Lynchburg — exactly midway between Norfolk at one side of the state,
and Bristol on the extreme of the other, for it is 204 miles to either
boundary.
Not content with my account of this town, or better, inspired by it,
Prue and Baily declared they wanted to see it for themselves, so we all
made an excursion thither just before going westward from Roanoke.
Lynchburg is well worth seeing, and your pleasure is accompanied
by the satisfaction arising from what is well earned. The James river
passes through a group of hills at this point, which begrudge it room
and rise steeply from its edge. It would be hard to find a more unsuit-
able place to set a town ; yet here has grown up a city of between fifteen
and twenty thousand people, half of whom can look down their neighbors'
chimneys. The railways and a few mills, by the help of excavations and
bridges, have made room enough to lay their tracks and build a station
down near the river level, but all the rest of the town clings precariously
to some steep hill-side. If you walk up from the station, you climb a
series of staircases ; if you ride, your omnibus is drawn by four or six
horses. When you leave your hotel and walk abroad you must choose
between going up hill or down, though some streets chiseled along the
hillside — all the houses on one side having high porches, and on the
other all the gardens dropping away from a low rear basement — run
fairly level for short distances. These are the principal residence streets,
and lie tier above tier as at Quebec, Duluth or Brattleboro. At intervals
a cross street rises from one to the other, not too steeply for horses to
use; but in many cases wooden stairways, or zig-zag paths are alone
available. An ornamental improvement has recently been made in one
such useless street by turning it into a park, dropping steeply from the
quaint old court house to Main street..
This terraced arrangement offers many advantages to the architect
and landscape gardener, and many beautiful and picturesque homes meet
our eyes as we stroll about, delighted more, perhaps, with the architect-
ural examples of ante-bellum affluence than with the brand new modern
houses scattered among them. The loose soil and upright position made
thorough paving necessary, if the whole place was to be kept from wash-
ing away, and this lends to Lynchburg a clean and thrifty aspect wanting
in most of its rivals. From any one of the many high points, and from
hundreds of pleasant windows overlooking the lower town and the river,
84
charming views are presented. "Opposite are the bold cliffs of the
James; far to the east the river loses itself in green meadows, and behind
dim woodlands; out in the westward the blue hills climb skyward, and
the famous Peaks of Otter prop up the feathery clouds; southward the
panorama opens with a glint of glory on wooded hills and misty valleys,
and shuts out the view only when the eye pauses at the dropping
horizon."
Lynchburg flourishes chiefly, perhaps, because it is at the centre of
the rich Piedmont tobacco growing district; and is £lso a depot for iron.
r»™?^
TOBACCO WAGONS AT LYNCHBURG.
To this has been added a concentration of transportation facilities which
have caused it to become the head-quarters of wide trading with farmers
and country merchants, almost without a competitor between Richmond
or Norfolk, and Knoxville. Through this James River gap, long ago.
NEGRO WAGONERS.
AN EBONY GABRIEL.
was built the James River and Kanawa Canal, now the road-bed of the
Richmond and Alleghany Railway. Railways also connect the town with
Washington, Norfolk, Danville and Knoxville. These bring hither so
much tobacco (not to mention lumber, tan-bark, sumac, grain and gen-
eral produce) that seventy or eighty establishments are engaged in its
manufacture or manipulation, and the town has become an important
85
purchasing point for northern factories. Many of the Lynchburg brands
of tobacco (especially that made for smoking) have an old and world-wide
reputation, and others are gaining newer but equal fame. As for iron,
one furnace makes thirty or forty tons of iron a day, drawing its ore from
the near neighborhood; and several foundries, machine shops, railway
repair shops, a nail mill, and other similar enterprises are in operation.
^■'^'
THE PEAKS OF OTTER.
Ample water-power is afforded by
the James, which here descends with
rapid current," turning hundreds of indus-
trious wheels, and sure to be called upon
to turn many more in the near future.
On the whole, our short visit to Lynchburg was productive of much
amusement and instruction. As Daily says : " It is a nice little city, six
or seven stories high."
A railway ride, extremely pleasant at any time, carries one from
Lynchburg to Roanoke, but Prue and Baily and I found it especially soon
the brilliant, well-washed morning when we undertook it before the
heat of the day had arrived.
The track clears its way through cuts and tunnels, spans lofty
86
bridges and runs along steep declivities devoted to pasturing what
must surely be "side-hill critters," with legs on one side shorter than
those on the other, until it has escaped the jumble of hills that environ
the three-storied town, giving many charming outlooks by the way.
Soon the Blue Ridge comes plainly into view on the right, where two
sharp and prominent heights, easily dominating the range, loom up ahead
and catch every eye. They are the Peaks of Otter — the loftiest points
(because of the resisting hardness of their syenite frames) in all the Blue
Ridge. Prue has possession of a guide-book and finds that it has been
ahead of us in experience :
" We sweep along," she reads, "through fair meadows, green val-
leys, by orchard and woodland, through fields of corn and patches of
tobacco ; we see the "mica flakes " in the railroad cuts, notice the red
iron stain on the hills ; we scare the fat cattle in the low lands, and waken
up the well-to-do farmers from their siesta under the shade trees."*
"Do you remember," I say to my companions, "that when we
were at Buchanan, which is only a dozen miles straight north of here, I
described how Hunter's raiders seized the town and destroyed the mills
and ordnance foundries ? "
"Yes."
" Well, he marched from there the next day straight across the Blue
Ridge between those two peaks, where a tier of rich grain and fruit
farms fills the saddle."
The retreating Confederates had felled trees across the narrow road,
blown it away where it ran along the edge of precipices, tumbled down
masses of overhanging walls in the depressions, aiid by bushwhacking
at every step obstructed the Union advance and caused great loss to their
trains. Hunter pressed on, however, and having won his way through
the defiles was substantially unopposed on the march through Fancy
Farm to Liberty, — a jolly little tobacco making town, a dozen miles from
Lynchburg, which the train was just now entering, and where a summer
hotel and half a hundred summer dresses welcomed us under the trees
at the station.
Here, at Liberty, the raiders struck this railway, which then, as now,
ran down into East Tennessee, and which was of the highest importance
to the Confederates as the great avenue and resources for supplies and
for the transferrence of troops. To break it was a measure of strategy
and its destruction a legitimate act in war. Colonel Halpine, the
chronicler of this expedition, tells with what system and vigor the
work of destruction was done. Up went the rails for miles and miles
along the road; the ties were gathered and set on fire; the rails laid across
them until heated in the middle enough to be bent out of all shape; the
torch was applied to trestles and bridges of wood, while bridges of stone
or iron were " sent kiting " by gunpowder.
Marching from Liberty toward Lynchburg, obliterating the railway
as they advanced, the army halted for the night on the Big Otter, after a
desultory encounter with the enemy ^t New London, where are the still
87
famous Bedford Alum Springs. So slow was progress possible through
that rough and wooded region, that at 2 p.m. the next day they had only
reached Diamond hill, where the Confederates were entrenched in bar-
ricades. This was on the wagon road, a short distance south of the rail-
way. The barricades were taken by a charge, and so badly demoralized
were its pseudo-defenders, that " had it not been for the rapid coming
on of night," writes a Federal staff-officer, " and the necessity of re-
moving our own and the enemy's wounded out of the woods, which had
caught fire during the action, and were now burning fiercely with a mighty
crackling and roar, only pierced by the terror-stricken screams of the
mangled men who lay beneath the flaming canopy of beams and branches,
we might have pushed on into Lynchburg."
Next morning, however, it was too late. An attempt had been made
by the Union soldiers to destroy the railroad bridge across the James,
but it had failed, and all night long Lee's reinforcements were poured
into the city. The forts and breastworks that crowned all the hills — you
may see their remains — were strong and well manned. Hunter's legions
charged but were repulsed. A battalion of Ohio men did get over the
works, but they never came back. At noon Hunter saw that he had too
hard a nut for his little army to crack, and secretly gave orders turning
back his trains which were far in the rear ; but his men fought on,
" believing firmly that they were to enter Lynchburg as conquerors if it
cost them a week's steady fighting."
From Liberty an excursion of great enjoyment may be made to the
top of the Peaks of Otter. We can see the hotel, a white dot, nestling
in a cleft at the very top of the sharpest of the twin summits. The view
overlooks what is called the Piedmont of Virginia, and can hardly be sur-
passed. " The lessening hills of the Blue Ridge," said one who knew it
well, " with many a lovely valley and brawling stream between, roll
downward from our feet, in woody and billowy undulations, ever dimin-
ishing until they merge and fade away in the noble champagne country
beyond, dotted with still handsome villas and farm-houses.
Beautiful sunlight patches floating over the massive and varying verdures
of the mountains ; clear springs bubbling out from beneath every moss-
grown rock; rich flowers shedding brilliancy and perfume even from the
topmost cliffs; and dense woods of unmatchable shadow and stateliest
growth giving the coolness and repose of perpetual twilight."
The distance to the top is only half a dozen miles, and suitable
carriages and drivers can be procured in Liberty at small cost.
The next station of consequence that we rush into, beyond Liberty, is
Blue Ridge Springs, a place which looks like a toy town, where the sta-
tion building is a large hotel. The piazza platform is crowded with
belles and beaus, substantial mammas, leisurely papas, and children
brown and hearty. Through one set of windows we see the dining-room
with laggards at breakfast; through another the office and a billiard
table or two ; through a third the rich furnishing of a parlor. Down
behind the hotel is a deep narrow valley filled with white buildings, great
and small, with graveled walks and flower-beds, spring houses and the
out-door equipment of a summer resort. These springs are an old-time
summering place of high repute medicinally, and higher socially. To
the Norfolk people they are particularly well known. Near by, as Baily
notes in his big Russia book, are extensive mines of iron ore, which are
reached by side-tracks, but no furnaces pollute the sweet, clear air of
these charming hills.
Only a little way beyond are Coyner's springs, another watering
place where gay girl-faces greet us at the station ; while Gishe's sends
a similar bevy in huge sunshades and broad canvas belts to see the
train go by. And so, almost before we know it, we leap the current
of Tinker creek and roll into Roanoke, — but not to stop, for we are
westward bound.
XIII.
WESTWARD BOUND.
The Wheatfields of the Roanoke.— Salem.— A verill's Raid upon the Railway.— The
Old Turnpike. — Alleghany Springs.— A Rough Region. — Big Tunnel. —
Chnstiansburg and its Neighborhood.— Central Station. —
First View of New River.
Head-quarters left behind, we run westward through the rolling
bottoms of the Roanoke, crossing many rough and rapid brooks that come
down from the hills. The river itself is swift and turbulent, for the
descent here is great.
Seven miles from Roanoke stands the old town of Salem, the bulk
of which is a mile or so distant. What we can see of it tempts us to
alight and discover more. The village lies in a broad valley, is sur-
rounded by large estates, and an air of prosperity and pleasant home-life
pervades the whole scene. One of the oldest and most prominent com-
munities in this part of the state, Salem long ago became noted for its
highly educated and religious society, which was partly a cause, partly a
result, of the location there of two academies of high repute — Roanoke
College for boys, and the Hollins Institute for girls. Red Sulphur
Springs, nine miles northward and 2,200 feet above the sea, is another
point of celebrity in this neighborhood.
This point was reached by the Federal cavalry under Averill, in
January of 1864, whose troops were the first blue coats seen in the town.
They tore up the railway, and then hastily departed. The ruins
remained unrepaired until the following June, when Hunter's army,
retreating slowly after the failure to enter Lynchburg through Buford's
gap and along the line of the railway, which they still more completely
destroyed as they yielded the ground, turned northward from Salem to
their last fight on Craig's mountain, just west of Newcastle.
89
It is with a very smooth and solid track that this destruction of war
has been replaced, and the old iron rails, out of which Hunter's men
curled such fantastic " neckties " around the oaks, were long ago dis-
carded for steel. The great turn-pike connecting the Valley of Virginia
THE ROANOKE.
with Tennessee, forming a high road through the line of towns between
Lynchburg and Knoxville and making an avenue for westward emigra-
tion and eastward marketing, is followed closely by the railway, and is
seen at the right hand. All along it stand houses, once the homes of the
lords of the soil— houses chiefly of brick, with the out-buildings made
of hewn logs.
To the left of the train is a confused mass of wooded hills; to the
right (northward) the long, straight, sterile Catawba ridge, on whose
hither front was old Fort Lewis— a defence of the pioneers against
Indians. Then a rough little cultivated nook opens out, and we cross
and recross the bright river, which here winds as though it were quite lost
among the knolls.
90
As these knolls lessen in height they become arable, and are all
under the plow or in grass, while high up on the tops of the distant
ridges great patches of wheat land have been cleared from the forest.
The first stop after Salem is at Big Spring, where there is a group of
old-fashioned houses around a gigantic fountain gushing from under a
bluff a hundred yards or so south of the track, shaded by noble willows
and filled with cresses.
Beyond lie broad and fertile flat lands through which the South fork
of the Roanoke comes down from Pilot mountain; and when these are
passed the road runs for a long distance upon a high bank, with the river
at its wooded base, in and out of rocky cuts, the view (when we can
catch glimpses abroad) extending across farm lands to the shapely hills
that hem them in with an ever- varying barrier. Thus a plateau is reached
where much tobacco grows, and we have climbed 330 feet more to Shaws-
ville, the station for Alleghany Springs four miles distant, whose stages
await the train. We did not go over, but Prue read to us about it from
a pamphlet, as follows:
" These springs are situated on the head-waters of the Roanoke
river, in the county of Montgomery, on the eastern slope of the Alle-
ghany mountains — the most elevated region between the Atlantic ocean
and the Rocky mountains."
"That's not quite true," I interrupt, thinking of Cloudland, and
several other districts. Then she continues: " The hotel and principal
range of cottages occupy smooth and undulating hills, gently sloping to a
broad grass-covered lawn of forty acres, extending to the banks of the
river. The first panoramic view of the establishment is reviving and
refreshing to the dust-covered traveler from the seaboard, and still more
so to the feeble invalid escaping from the hot sun of the South. They
have the pleasing consciousness, after all the toils and privations of
travel, that they have at length reached a spot where ease, comfort and
repose await them. This feeling is the first step toward the restoration
to health. . . . The accommodations are first-class, and afford every
convenience and comfort both to the invalid and the pleasure-seeker.
Pure spring water is conveyed by pipes from the mountains to every part
of the establishment, and guests are supplied with hot, cold and plunge
baths."
The hills rise steep and irregular all about us as we proceed; brushy
to the top, but showing few large trees, for these have been cut out as
fast as they became available. Now and then a fine house will stand in
some more open spot, for this red soil is rich where enough of it can be
found together, but the principal signs of habitation appear in the shape
of rude cabins in the midst of small neglected clearings. We see no
sheep, but know they belong here — as the Arab in the fable knew a camel
had passed his tent — by the tracks of their nimble feet on the steep gulch-
sides.
At Big Tunnel — which is great only by comparison, and takes but a
minute or so to traverse — is another little station, where " out in its
91
beautiful nest, only a mile from the road, sits the famous Montgomery
White Sulphur Springs." It was from these heights, looking over the
path we have come, that Edward King, author of "The Great South,"
" came suddenly upon the delicious expanse of the Roanoke valley,
bathed in the splendid shimmer of an afternoon autumn sun, and fading
into delicatest colored shadows where the mountains rose gently, as if
loth to leave the lovely and lowly retreat. The vale was filled with
wheat and corn fields, and with perfect meadows, through which ran lit-
tle brooks gleaming in the sun."
That epitomizes the view very nicely.
Still ascending, we presently reach the top of the pass over the
"Alleghany mountains" (by which obscure term map-makers trace the
divide between the Atlantic and the Mississippi) at Christiansburg,
another old time village, where a highway north and south crosses the
east and west turnpike. These roads penetrate a fruitful and beautiful
region to the northward, and lead to such points of special interest as
the Yellow Sulphur Springs and Blacksburg Agricultural College. In
regard to the former, Prue's guide-book informs us that it is three and a
half miles distant and 2,200 feet altitude. " The mineral properties of the
water are well known, and have been tested by thousands, and invariably
with good effect. It is alterative and tonic in its action, possessing all the
qualities which are usually found in the best alum springs." Central, the
next station, is a half-way point between Lynchburg and Bristol, and
hence chosen by the railway as a place for repair shops, a round house
and other works. The Union cavalry, during Averill's remarkable raid
in the spring of 1864, reached this place and destroyed track and build-
ings; a house near the station shows yet a perforation made by one of
the shells.
From Christiansburg, which is 2,000 feet above the sea, we have been
running downward, past the coal-bearing Price mountain on the right,
through a very picturesque region, and at Central come suddenly out
upon a broad river, curving grandly about the great green hills that
guide its course. It is the New river, and presently crossed upon a
lofty iron bridge, from which a magnificent picture is presented in each
direction.
The New river is now one of the oldest rivers in the Union, so far
as knowledge of it goes. Rising from springs on Grandfather, in the
Iron Mountain range of North Carolina, it pursues a great curve toward
the east through the serried uplands of the Virginian Appalachia, and
empties into the Ohio opposite Gallipolis, almost due north of its rising.
Beginning as the " New," it changes its name below the entrance of the
Gauley river, in West Virginia, and becomes the " Kanawa."
Here at Central the stream is quiet, willow -fringed and bordered by
farms, save where rocky bluffs approach too closely. Just beyond the
bridge is the station of New River, whence departs the branch line running
down the river into the coal regions of the Bluestone valley and Flat-top
mountain, the centre of which is at the town of Pocahontas, some
92
seventy-five miles north-westward. This branch line pursues for a long
distance the course by which the stream has cut its way athwart the mount-
ain ranges, and affords the traveler a sight of one of the most interest-
ing and beautiful canons in the country.
XIV.
NEW RIVER CANON AND MOUNTAIN LAKE.
Cloyd's Mountain. — The River Gate-way. — Clififs, Bastions and Pinnacles. — Luxuriance
of Foliag^e. — The Narrows. — Pocahontas and. its Coal Mines. — Eggleston's. —
The Road to Mountain Lake. — Sunset from Bald Knob. —
Boating upon the Lake. — The Glories of the Forest. —
Prue's Summer House.
Upon leaving New River station the railway crosses the peninsula
enclosed in the great Horseshoe bend, but, half a dozen miles ahead,
again approaches the stream where it attacks its first obstacle, now
divided, by its success in forcing a passage through, into Brush mountain
on the east and Cloyd's on this, the western side.
This first gateway is an impressive suggestion of what will follow.
On each side the mountain stands with its feet laved by the current, and
at a low stage of the water the eye can trace at a glance the contin-
uous ledges of steeply inclined strata which match one another in the
opposite headlands, and are connected across the bed of the river. The
mountain is densely timbered, but through the trees and bushes these
great slanting ledges protrude in tilted shelves, whose slope corresponds
precisely with the southern face of the ridge. The roadway has been
dug out of the steep hillside, and everywhere on the inside is a rocky
wall, sometimes breaking down where a ravine has worn a hollow; some-
times rising many feet sheer above us ; sometimes so hollowed under
that great masses overhang the cars.
The river here cuts squarely across the range, and we can see, — but
not count, for they are too many — the upturned, black edges of the
eroded strata stretched across the streamlike miniature dams. But soon
the river changes its course, and- then these parallel lines run diagonally
across it, or even lie lengthwise of its current in the elbow of some
bend. Wherever that is the case the river narrows and deepens, because
its eroding force, applied lengthwise the outcrop, would act more forci-
bly to cut downward than sideways ; while for the opposite reason, the
stream is always broadest where the stratum edges run -most nearly
transverse to its current. Over these submerged, or half submerged,
ledges the water passes with much commotion, and sometimes, where an
outcrop is harder than its fellows, and therefore more prominent, there
will be a little cascade.
This Cloyd's mountain overhead is the same at whose western end,
where the highway passes from Newbern to Pearisburg, was fought
the terrific battle between the Union forces under Crook, and the Con-
federates under Jones and Jenkins, in which Brig. Gen. R. B. Hayes
93
(afterward President of the United States) was one of the commanders.
The Rebels were entrenched in a strong position upon the mountain,
but at a terrible cost of life were at last driven out, and pursued with con-
stant fighting to Newbern, where the destruction of railway bridges and
stores, which had been the object of the expedition, was effected.
The cliffs, under which we are passing, are very beautiful. The
new rock, white or yellow, contrasting finely with the hoary gray of the
natural exposures, and overhung by the dense and varied foliage of the
universal forests, presents some novel combination of form and color
every moment, for we are continually changing our point of view in fol-
lowing the windings of the gorge. Sometimes the cliff wall and its sloping
mountain-cap, a bit of river, a fragment of corn field and an uncertain
background of far away highlands, are held for an instant in the frame of
deep cutting; then a shoulder of rock, or a grove of shining maples,
slips between and blots it out, but with the same motion places upon
the screen another picture equally enticing yet wholly unlike in its com-
position. With such elements at command, what cannot be done ?
At Staytide station (where a gay party get off, bound for Eggleston's
and' Mountain Lake), Cloyd's mountain has been passed, but opposite
stands the still more lofty barrier of Walker's mountain.
Emerging from a short tunnel just below Staytide, we are confronted
on the opposite side of the river by vertical cliffs ot rocks that are broken
into bastions and pinnacles in some parts, in others remain massive and
bold. They rise several hundred feet, straight from their reflections in
the oily flood so deep and still at their feet, and bear upon their shoulders
the rugged summits of Gap mountain. On this side, also, sandstone
cliffs surprise our eyes by their height. We scarcely expect such great-
ness in southern scenery as is here to be found. Assailed by blasting, to
furnish a passage for the railway, where otherwise no room for a track
existed between the cliffs and the water, the strata have so broken apart
as to leave great square corners, with protruding points and ledges which
cast bold shadows. Nor are the rocks white and garish, but softly colored
in browns, pale yellow and dead red tints ; while above and beside the new
exposures rise the jagged precipices shaped slowly by water and air, and
dark with the storms of unnumbered seasons. They are reared above
the trees in grand pyramids and towers, or jut out like the prow of some
huge vessel, or stand in thin protruding walls set edgewise into the ver-
dure-hidden hill, — for everywhere, you must remember,
"■ The scarred summit's rifted seams
Are bright with ghstening pines."
It is the exceeding luxuriance and diversity of the foliage, and the
beautiful way in which these hoary and massive old rocks are embowered
in trees, shrubbery, vines, herbage, moss and lichens, which make them
so picturesque and prevent that feeling of roughness and sterility that
becomes oppressive in the far West or among the Canadian hills.
Thus we wind with the urgent river through the Narrows, where
94
NEW RIVER SCENERY.
[From Photographs by C. H. James, Philadelphia, Pa.]
95
Pearis, Wolf Creek and the East River ranges crowd close together
on the west, and the huge form of Peter's mountain towers massive on
the east. But the river long ago won its right of way between, and we
follow, unable to see out, and undesirous to do so, for the "storm-tossed
Titans " around us, and the restless pushing stream, are enough to fill
our eyes and minds.
Clear of this montanic labyrinth (it is wonderful to look back at
the huge wall and try to understand how you squirmed through) the road
leaves the New and takes its course up East river, which flows along the
northern base of the range of the same name, with Black Oak mountain
opposite. This gorge is narrow, abrupt or often craggy on its sides,
forested from top to bottom, and hence most romantically wild. Saw
mills are being put up all along it since the advent of the railway, the
logs to supply which are sent rolling and sliding down long paths cleared
on the faces of the high, steep hills, which press upon us with rocky
walls almost unclimbable, every dark old ledge just now lighted up with
thickets of purple poke-berries. Oakvale is the railway station for
Princeton, the seat of Mercer county, West Virginia; and Winonah that
for Pearisburg, county seat of Giles, Virginia. At Graham's we have
reached the head of East river, and thence descend along one of the
confluents of the Bluestone to Pocahontas, through a gorge so narrow,
and occupied by so tortuous a stream, that it is crossed seventeen times in
the nine miles.
Pocahontas is a rough, new town of frame houses, nearly all of the
same pattern, built by the company whose coal mines are there, and
painted in the most original colors possible for the mind of man to invent
and combine! In order to get room for a town, the forest was cut away
from a hill side — the expansion of the bottom of the gorge there being
none too great to accommodate the many railway tracks, coal-coking
ovens, and company's shops of one kind or another. In the midst of the
stumps and boulders of this steep hillside the houses were set down in
streets which some day, perhaps, will be terraces. The place looks just
like one of the new coal or silver camps in the far West, and strongly re-
minded me in particular of Carbonado, in Washington Territory.
Pocahontas will grow better, however, when she has had time. There
are churches and school-houses, a club and reading-room, good stores
and the beginning of a prosperous town; but never, I venture to think,
will it be a delightful place.
Reversing each picture as we descend the railway along New river,
the "lofty and luminous summits" take on a new aspect and beauty quite
as novel and enchanting as when we admired them going up.
It seems a short trip, therefore, that brings us to Staytide, where we
disembark and are ferried over to the New River White Sulphur Springs,
or, as the place is more generally called, after the owner of the estate —
" Eggleston's,*
At Eggleston's, one finds a long rambling old house with a broad
lawn and grand trees in front, an orchard, garden and sunny hillside
96
behind, standing on the river bluff where it commands a view of the
bend and both shores. Old in tradition, as in architecture, fashion is here
left behind, and health, fun and comfort reign. For him who enjoys the
water — and who does not? — there is the broad, deep and placid river,
where he may pole a punt, or paddle a canoe, or anchor and fish, or find a
shaded nook and swim in the cleanest of floods. For the lover of scenery,
there is the broken front of the mountain, carved by nature's deft chisels
into a thousand buttresses, arches, and pinnacles, half veiled in clinging
verdure and the nestling place of playful sunbeams and coy shadows.
For the enthusiast in natural history or art, I know no more fruitful spot.
For the invalid, there are peace and beauty more healing than the most
beneficent waters.
Eggleston's is now the point of access to Mountain Lake. This is a
body of water a mile in length, poised near the summit of a spur of the
Alleghanies at an elevation of 4,500 feet above the sea, A century ago
it was much smaller than now (a story that formerly no water at all was
there, save a rill, is unworthy of belief) and became a favorite place for the
graziers to collect and salt their cattle. Hence it came to be called the
Salt Pond, and the lofty semicircular ridge that surrounds it was named
Salt Pond mountain, long ago resorted to by picnic parties, who
reached it by the good road which crosses over the range from
Christiansburg and Newport to Union.
The road from Eggleston's winds upward along creek gorges, through
a very wild and lonely region, where the mountainers are content with
wresting small crops of corn and tobacco from the rocky soil. The
streams occupy gorges which in summer go nearly or quite dry, yet are
liable to become the sudden conduits of a thunderstorm, when their chan-
nels will be filled with a raging flood, no trace of which remains next
morning. As you approach the summit, wide views open out southward
and eastward which gradually expand as each succeeding ridge-top is sur-
mounted and the way grows steeper. Going up in the afternoon, you
do not halt at the lake, but keep on to Bald Knob, the highest point of
the Salt Pond mountain, whose apex is so beaten by gales and burdened
by snow that nothing better than stunted bushes has been able to take
root amid the clefts of the rocks. Here you arrive at sunset, and in its
clear light your eye can sweep a circle which passes through the bound-
aries of five states. There is nothing to show where these boundaries
ie, however, and pride of locality is rebuked as one sees how homoge-
neous is the whole landscape.
It is a very wrinkled, disjointed and savage world that you look
upon, too. In every direction as far as sight goes, from the azure crest
of Kentucky's Cumberland on the west to the ragged horizon behind the
twin peaks of Otter on the east, and from the magnificent mountains of
North Carolina, where the Kanawa takes its rise, to the faint West Vir-
ginian sky-line where it fights its troublous way toward the Ohio, all is
mountain and valley. Rank behind rank' ridge undulating with ridge,
peak rivaling peak, spur flanking spur, color answering to color in the
97
regular gradation of distance, which ever way you gaze the magnificent
picture awes you with its breadth and weight and sublime repose. It is
a vast harmony in blue; the higher lights of the elevations softened and
the shadows in the depressions illumined by the haze which veils, subdues
and idealizes, lending to a stern, rough world the hue of
" the clear and crystalline heaven,
Like the protecting hand of God inverted above them."
How can one portray a scene like that, or tell the emotions ? — the
scientific satisfaction with which a map-maker and geologist would scan
the wide area beneath his eye, tracing the system concealed beneath the
seeming disorder; the watchfulness with which a poet would study the
delicate blending and comparison of colors, all graded to purple and blue
with infinite taste; the ecstasy of the poet, the veneration of the seer?
Then as the orb of day drops slowly into the smoky atmosphere along
the western horizon, to illumine it with a red and coppery light mo-
mently changing and flooding that proud half of the world with golden
mist, while behind us the ridges grow dark and are massed together in
purple gloom — how can any one describe that either; or make you under-
stand the play of dazzling color shooting from behind the serrated wall so
sharply marked upon the brilliant sky ?
" Beside us, purple-zoned, Wachusett laid
His head against the West; whose warm light made
His aureole; and o'er him sharp and clear,
Like a shaft of lightning in mid-launching stayed,
A single level cloud line, shone upon
By the fierce glances of the sunken sun,
Menaced the darkness with its golden spear."
The lake (I regret that the historically suggestive name Salt Pond,
has been thrown out) is reniform in outline and a mile in length. At
one end a large clearing has been made, and here stand the various build-
ings of the unpretentious but comfortable hotel, which include near the
water's edge a boat-house, bowling alley and billiard room. There are
also a few private cottages. Taking a boat we slowly row down the
lake, and enjoy its strange and inspiring beauty — the interest of solitude
and wildness. When your back is turned to the hotel, nothing is to be
seen but a forest of remarkably varied growth, rising amphitheatre-like
and unbroken from the water to the crest of the lofty ridges. At the
lower end of the lake we land and climb among broken crags to where a
summer-house is perched high among the trees, and haunted by birds.
There is a cascade and creek gorge of special charm not far away,
and two or three look-outs on the mountain from which ample landscapes
may be seen ; a ramble of paths through the forest ; a remarkable cold
spring ; and always the sunrise and sunset from Bald Knob. But Prue
and I think that, if ever we are permitted by happy fortune to spend a
month at Mountain Lake, it will be to the sequestered summer-house
among the mossy rocks and sunlit woods at the lower end of the pond
that we shall oftenest go.
98
XV.
THROUGH SOUTH-WEST VIRGINIA.
New River to the Tennessee Line. — Dublin. — Mines and Furnaces of Cripple Creek. —
Martin's, and the pretty Maple Shade Inn.— Max Meadows. — Wytheville. —
Rural Retreat and Marion. — Bass Fishing and Mineral Springs. —
Glade Spring and Emory College. — Trout. — Saltville
and its War History.— The Battle at Wytheville.—
Abingdon and us " Girl Graduates." —
Bristol and Johnson City.
From New River westward is a charming ride among the mountains.
Indeed, the great drawback to the pleasure of traveling amid these
superb fastnesses of nature, is the singular one that the eye and brain
are sated by the constant succession of noble outlooks which occur as
we progress. Here the titans seem to have vied in their gigantic upbuild-
ing of cliff and pinnacle. Here the tempest has its lurking place, and
the fountain heads of mountain torrents spring forth gladly, and go
dashing down their rocky beds to the far away alluvial valleys where
mankind shall chain them, and make them turn huge mill wheels, stain
their purity with the outflow of factories, and send them on to lose them-
selves in the salt bays that reach up to grasp them from the wide and
restless sea. We look up and about us with awe and reverence, and
even the irrepressible Baily for once is hushed.
Dublin, where a fight followed that on Cloyd's mountain, having been
THE MAPLE SHADE INN.
passed, we skirt the rough declivities of Peak Creek Knob and Draper's
mountain, with Little Walker's mountain filling the northern horizon some
miles away. At Martin's, in a comfortable little basin among the hills, we
enter the mining regions of south-west Virginia — a region whose almost
unlimited resources in this direction have hardly begun to be developed
yet. Close by are the Bertha zinc works, both the mines and furnaces
of which are well worth visiting. Northward a branch railroad, nine
miles long, leads to anthracite coal mines in Pulaski county, while a
much longer railroad nearly completed goes southward along Cripple
creek, in Wythe county, to a larger number of mines and furnaces, pro-
ducing iron, lead, zinc, copper and coal. At present the ores and pro-
99
duct of these mines and furnaces (its pig is said to have been sold for the
highest price any pig iron ever brought in the world) is taken for ship-
ment to several small stations along this part of the line, of which the
chief is Wytheville, the county seat.
No man who is interested in minerals and their reduction should fail
to stop and inspect this remarkable district ; and in order that visitors
may do so with comfort, a fine new hotel, like Luray Inn and the Hotel
Roanoke, will have been opened at Martin's before this page gets into
type, called the Maple Shade Inn. Following in its architecture the
favorite models of the " early English " school, modern and luxurious in
all its appointments, managed by the most experienced northern hands,
this fine hostelry will make a halting place of peculiar attractiveness, not
only to those whose business or curiosity in mining matters leads them
to stop there, but to the great tide of pleasure travel which drifts cease-
lessly up and down this favored region, and is glad to pull up, where it
can be sure of creature comforts, long enough to get more than a passing
glimpse of the mountain scenery. To persons coming from the southern
lowlands, to whom the coolness and northerly beauty of these ranges anr"
headlong brooks are especially grateful and fascinating, the establish-
ment of this hotel will be particularly opportune.
Just beyond Martin's is Max-Meadows, an ancient lake basin, where
the wide valley presents a lovely pastoral landscape, in which the furnace
stack and ore-wagon seem anomalous.
"What are you saying, Prue ? That your guide-book hits it off
neatly ? Let us hear,
' And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.' "
" That is asking a good deal, but here is the description :"
Groups of cattle are scattered about, shading themselves under the
trees or nipping the succulent grass. The river here is broad and clear,
mirroring in its placid breast the verdure-bordered banks, to whose sides
the railway confidingly clings. Amid the gently sloping hills, this little
meadow-town looks quietly out on the world ; and the busy men, who
handle great loads of iron and great bags of shot, from the iron and lead
mines near, do not seem to realize that a sa'ibe is taking note of them,
and that posterity will read of their enterprise in type of emulating
character.
" That's good. What is written of Wytheville, which you can't see
very well, because it is a mile or so from the station ? I never went up
to the town, but I know you get a stunning good meal at the station, in
the queer basement of Boyd's big brick hotel, when your train happens
to hit it at the right hour."'
" Well, the book speaks twice of the good fare, once of the good
society and extols the cheapness and excellence of the livery," says Prue
glancing along the page.
" That's a strong point, ' Baily adds, " because Wytheville is a sum-
mer resort, and one of its great attractions is the good fishing to be had
in the neighboring mountains, and the remarkably interesting scenery
100
their gorges and summits contain. To enjoy both sport and sight-seeing
one needs serviceable horses and vehicles, and doesn't want to pay extor-
tionately, so I score one for Wytheville on that. Shall go there myself
next year. What else Madame Prue ? "
" Besides the naturally attractive features of this place and its sur-
roundings," she resumes, " it is grading and paving its broad streets and
has brought into the heart of the town the waters of a fine alum, sulphur
and chalybeate spring through a system of pipes — perhaps the only
improvement of the kind in this country. On the next page it mentions
that Sharon Alum and Chalybeate Springs, in Bland county, is only
eighteen miles from Wytheville, in the midst of a pretty country con-
taining good shooting and fishing.''
Stations pass rapidly. Crocketts, Rural Retreat — the highest point on
the Norfolk and Western Railway — Atkins and Marion are all of more
importance to the freight than the passenger department of the railway,
for they are points of shipment of ore and pig metal of iron and copper,
some of which is brought from North Carolina.
The last named is a village of some size, and contains a boys*
academy and a female seminary. The- middle fork of the Holston river
runs through the town, and is full of bass ; while the mountains south-
ward— particularly White Top — are a paradise for fly-fishers in search of
trout. Not far away are the Chilhowee, White, Black and Red Sulphur
springs, the water of each one of which is famous for its curative
power over scrofula and other ailments.
Just below is Glade Spring depot, about which the Madame reads :
" Glade Springs is a little village from which the tourist can reach
many points of interest. Washington Springs nestles among the hills two
miles away. The Seven Springs, noted for the ' Seven Springs iron and
alum mass,' are two miles out in another direction. White Top mount-
ain, noted for its bears and speckled trout, looks from a distance down on
the village streets. From this place a branch road, ten miles long, leads
out to Saltville. . . . Nature has done a great deal for the Old
Dominion, but with characteristic energy these south-western Virginians
have had to ' have a hand in it,' They have put churches in the groves,
mills on the streams, barns in the valleys, colleges on the hills. They
have not always improved upon Nature's work, but in many instances they
have not marred it. Here, two miles from Glade Springs, is a pretty
valley with a high hill in the centre, and on the top of this, as if to pro-
claim to the world the appropriateness of its motto :
' Mens Sana, in corpore sano,'
Emory and Henry College is built."
" Strikes me they might have found space for something more about
Saltville," Baily growled.
" Do you know anything about it?" I asked.
" Quantities of facts," he declared, opening the red book. " Saltville
is the centre of a natural basin or valley, which is one of the loveliest
spots in Virginia, and that is about equal to saying, ' in the world.' In the
centre are springs of saline water and gypsum mines, and here are
lUl
extensive salt-making works. It was upon these works that the Confed-
erates depended almost wholly for salt during the war, and from the very-
start the Union generals schemed to destroy them; but they were too far
within Secessia and too well guarded. In the spring of 1864, however,
the Federal department of West Virginia sent a strong cavalry expedition
to work all the ruin it could along this railway, and while Crook was
to operate at New River, as we have already learned, to Averill was
assigned the attempt against Saltville. But when Averill got into Tazewell
county — and a sweet time he must have had of it among those compli-
cated ridges! — he heard that the defences at Saltville were too strong for
him to attack as he had no artillery, so he turned against the bullet-mak-
ing lead works at Wytheville; but General John Morgan moved his troops
and guns at once from Saltville to Wytheville, and fought a battle which
Averill got so sick of, that during the ensuing night he decamped east-
ward, and contented himself with wrecking the railway and shops near
Christiansburg. Morgan's men went on by train to Dublin, but were too
late to do more than cover the retreat of their comrades who had been
beaten b)'' Crook at Cloyd's mountain and Newbern."
Abingdon, which the brakeman called about the time Baily shut up
his book, revived in my mind the story of Daniel Boone, whose trail to
Kentucky ran this way; then Prue said she had a friend who went to
school here, and so knew that the pleasant town had several girl's board-
ing schools, of high repute in the far South, whence parents are wisely
fond of sending their children into these healthful highlands to pass their
school days. Emory College is near enough to be convenient for flirtation
purposes, and the pretty maidens in their walks abroad can usually get a
glimpse of stalwart sophomores, or even capture, now and then, the
matured heart of a grave and reverend senior. Abingdon is a flourish-
ing place of a couple of thousand people, beautifully situated, and sur-
rounded by rich magnetic ores of iron, and by valuable beds of variegated
marble.
A few moments more and we are at Bristol, the terminus of the
great Norfolk & Western Railway, and on the boundary of the Old
Dominion, for half the town is in Tennessee and half in Virginia.
" Bristol," reads the Madame from the last page of her guide-book,
" is the point of junction with the new railroad to be built through
Scott county to Cumberland gap, in the direction of Kentucky — the
centre of another district which must become noted as a mining and man-
ufacturing section. Scott county has thick beds of the finest Tennessee
marble, iron ores and coal. Lee county, a short distance further, has
extensive deposits of the famous red hematite iron ore; and when all
these ores are brought by the new railroad into communication, at Bris-
tol, with the magnetic and the brown iron ores of Washington and John-
son counties, great furnaces for their reduction must be built at Bristol.
Bristol has already given evidence of decided improvement and exten-
sion, and is destined to be one of the most prosperous and distinguished
of inland towns."
We are hurrying to a delight ahead, and do not stop at Bris-
tol, This trip is not in search of commercial gain, but mental re-
102
laxation in the enjoyment of the beautiful and the ennobling in na-
ture:—
" Absence of occupation is not rest;
A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed."
So we ran straight on to Johnson City, Tennessee, and put up for
the night in a hotel, which, if not gorgeous, was at least comfortable.
XVI.
ROAN MOUNTAIN AND THE CANONS OF
DOE RIVER.
A Narrow Gauge Side-trip. — The Cranberry Iron Mines. — Elizabethtown. — Ap-
proaching the Canon. — Fierce Torrents, Lofty Headlands and Flower-hung
Precipices. — The Road to Roan Mountain. — Peculiarities of the Forest. —
'' Cloudland." — Above a Thunderstorm. — The Hotel on the Peak. —
Exploration, Sport, Science and Love-making.
Our halt at Johnson City was to be prepared to spend the next few
days in " Cloudland,' — a region justly so-called, since it lies six thousand
feet above the level of sea, supported upon the Atlas shoulders of
Roan mountain. It is reached by the East Tennessee & North Carolina
Railway (narrow gauge), which unites with the main line at this junction,
and is carried along the gorge of Doe river. Its trains are conveniently
arranged both for those who wish simply to see the gorge at a cost of no
more than half a day's time, and for the happy others who may climb
Roan mountain. For a tourist to miss this trip, I assured my party,
would be one of the greatest errors conceivable.
The former (short-trip) class of travelers can go up as far as Cran-
berry station in the morning, get dinner, and a ramble at the fine hotel
maintained there by the iron mining company, and return in the after-
noon to Johnson City in time for the evening trains east and west.
Besides the scenery of the canon they can visit the mines at Cran-
berry, where, by means of level tunnels piercing the hillside, is obtained
a bluish, magnetic ore of iron of peculiar purity and unequaled in the
United States, Baily assures me, for the making of Bessemer steel. The
mining operations, only recently begun, are steadily enlarging, and pig is
made on the spot by the charcoal process, wood being cheap and plenti-
ful in the neighborhood.
The chief interest of the Doe River trip, however, lies in the passage
through the canon, which recalls to me more nearly the appearance of
Grape creek, near Canon City, Colorado, than any other gorge I know.
The Doe river is a stream as broad as a village street, which rises
high up in the Roan Mountain range, and empties into the Wautauga.
Though its later progress is quiet and dignified, as befits the serene ending
of a busy youth, all its early career is a headlong race through the wil-
derness, audits history is that of one " who overcometh."
On leaving Johnson City the first ten miles of the journey thither
103
carries one through a rich farming region, affording a most excellent
sample of the rural appearances, population and picturesqueness of 'old
East Tennessee. On the south towers a double mountain — a spur of the
Unaka range, one part of which is locally called Brier mountain, while
the further crest is named Buffalo, because of the "hump upon his back."
Ten miles from Johnson City is Elizabethtown, the county seat of
Carter, or Keeyarter, as a northern ear will interpret the gliding pro-
nunciation inherited by these people from their Scotch-Irish ancestors.
It is a pleasant village in the centre of a plain filled with fertile fields and
surrounded by shapely and richly-tinted hills ; and the copper cupola of
ON DOK RIVER.
its court house stands like an accent-mark above the brown roofs, to
emphasize it in our recollections.
Only a little way farther on the close-crowded foothills, standing
like outer works of a grand fortress, rise compact and precipitous,
and out of them gushes the noisy and vehement river. The track seeks
its margin, where it is laid along scarps carved from the solid mountain-
side, or upon a bed of broken stone thrown down at the edge of the
stream. The river comes tumbling towards us with madder haste and
whiter foaming the farther we ascend, for its path grows more steep,
tortuous and obstructed, until it can only be described as one long rock-
104
tormented cataract — white and yeasty where it struggles fiercely in the
rough or narrow places ; glassy where in even flood it curves smoothly
over some ledge or bowlder ; rich luminous green in shadowy pools,
whence bubbles rise like buoyant diamonds to disappear in twinkling
sparkles of colored light. Plants creep down as near to the rocky
channel as they can, fearless of the floods ; and shrubs that miraculously
have taken root hold sturdily to their place beside the water, cooled by
its flying spray. Above all, on each side, rise the rugged, sliding,
eagle-haunted, thickly wooded steeps, to their pinnacle-studded crests
poised a quarter of a mile in air —
-' A wild and broken landscape, spiked with firs."
Yet this is only the beginning of the gorges. While we are sweep-
ing round its sudden curves, threading brief tunnels, or skirting bold
headlands from one cut de sac to another, our attention engrossed by the
river and the grandeur of the primeval hills, we suddenly find the
wooded gorge become a rocky chasm, and that, with one foot in the
boiling torrent, our venturesome train is pushing between vast walls of
massive granite and gneiss that rise hundreds of feet straight over-
head— sheer as a plummet's fall and so lofty that the great spruces
perched dizzily upon their verge seem the merest shrubs. These cliffs
do not stand flat and unbroken like an artificial wall, however, but have
been worn into a series of mighty headlands which we review at various
angles, now near, now remote — gazing ahead at the towering height
which we tremble to approach, straining our necks in vain endeavor to
scan its top while we are close underneath, looking back at it in surprised
delight as it poses in splendid dignity behind our departing train, or
salutes its royal brother across the gorge.
Prue and I have seen far taller cliifs, and a hundred miles of them
where here is only one. We have run for half a day amid the ringing
terrors of the Royal Gorge and the Black Canon, with walls so near we
could almost touch them, and half a mile in altitude. The face of none
of these Doe River cliffs, perhaps, is more than six or eight hundred
feet in vertical height, capped here and there by a spire or pinnacle, and
they form, as I have said, a series of prominences, rather than a con-
tinuous wall ; but we decided that there was more of charm for the eye
and satisfaction to the heart here than among the greater glories of the
Rockies. The comparison, nevertheless, is not quite fair, though it is
sure to be made by all travelers who have seen both; for in place of
the purity of the air and the nakedness which magnify the impression of
vast size and distance in the far West, we have here a soft atmosphere,
yellow light, and the mantling beauty of diverse vegetation which belong
to the southern climate.
The arrangement of the rocks and their varying hues, painted by
the weather, contribute greatly to the fine effect, too. The strata are not
horizontal, making every line either level or upright, but they slope steeply
down stream, and the shape of every hill-top, headland, river-fall and
horizon line, conforms to this pleasing angle. The whole world here-
105
abouts, as Prue puts it, is "cut bias." Athwart the fronts of these
gigantic cliffs run bands of vari-tinted strata, separated by black lines and
great protruding ledges, which carry slanting ranks of trees, one above
the other, their backs set close against the cliff, their branches all reach-
ing fearlessly forward over the abyss. Everywhere upon the lesser
ledges, and upon all the jutting points and pediments, and everywhere
preserving and emphasizing the graceful inclination of the rock-layers,
are rooted flowers, ferns, chevrons of emerald grass, bristling evergreens
and gnarled dwarfs of other trees, from the foam-splashed foundation to
the towers that challenge the thunderbolt and catch the first flush of dawn.
The cliffs, then, are grand, not only, because of their height, massive
breadth and unswaying solidity as they lean over the chasm, but also are
rich in beauty.
Such, feebly rendered, was the impression this wonderful gateway
through the mountains made upon us. Some day a greater leisure will
let painter and poet study it, and then, I hope, a far better hand than
mine may portray it for you as it should be done. Why, my dear reader,
do you not go there and try to do so yourself ?
At Roan Mountain station comfortable hacks are in waiting to carry
the traveler to the summit, a dozen miles distant. The road is a good
one — not, of course, a macadamized boulevard, but much better than one
could expect ; and it runs almost uninterruptedly through the dense forest,
clothing the foothills. The botanist observes changes as the grade rises;
plants of the lowlands disappearing one by one, and varieties of trees
and foliage presenting themselves which only belong to high levels. At
last almost nothing in the shape of trees, except the balsam fir, can be
seen, denoting that the summit is near ; and when the top is finally
attained you find it altogether bare of wood. The unshod pate of the
mountain, nevertheless, is carpeted by a turf of luxurious grass, varie-
gated in summer with innumerable alpine blossoms small in size, and
sitting close to the ground, but lovely beyond their more rank and
showy sisters of the lowlands.
The few acres of open land on the apex of this huge elevation (its
neighbor. Mount Mitchell, is the loftiest point east of the Mississippi) is far
above the range of ordinary storm-clouds, so that the novel spectacle of
thunder, lightning and rain a thousand feet below you may often be wit-
nessed. It is called " Cloudland," and furnishes the site of a hotel, made
of logs, where sixty or seventy guests can be accommodated in great
comfort, and even a hundred have been stowed away. "It is never
warm up here, and people are willing to sleep close together," it was
explained to us. Plain, but wholesome and satisfactory, fare is furnished,
and the charge at present is only two dollars a day.
Though here the poet's wish for "a lodge in some vast wilderness"
would seem to be realized, since there is no sign of humanity beyond the
hotel clearing, ample opportunities for amusement and pastime exist.
The loquacious landlord will tell you of many a point of lookout to be
visited, one after another, each spreading beneath you a new landscape
106
" wide, wild and open to the air," yet made up of the same glorious ele-
ments that constitute the others. There are caverns to explore ; bee-
trees to search out ; glens to lunch and dream in, lying beside babbling
brooks upon springy cushions of fern and moss ; crags to climb, and
precipices to try the nerves of the most dauntless ; while every stream
that gathers headway down the mountain is haunted by trout, and each
grove tempts the sportsman with certainty of small game and the allur-
ing chance of a deer or bear or wildcat. As for flirtations — given the
girl of your heart, and the whole world has not a more inspiring spot !
while the sober minded scientist, turning his back on such immaterial
frivolities as games on a hotel lawn or love-making excursions to crags
and crannies, can find here a Labrador brought south for his study, since
the great altitude of this peak makes its climatic conditions, and conse-
quently its fauna and flora, almost arctic. For old and young, grave
and gay, therefore, " Cloudland " furnishes peculiarities of occupation
and novelty in entertainment, such as is combined no where else that I
know of in this country.
XVII.
THROUGH EAST TENNESSEE.
The Great Appalachian Valley. — Early Settlement of Tennessee. — The Home of
Andrew Johnson. — Rogersville, Morristown and the Marble Quarries. — The
French Broad.— Asheville and the Highest Mountains. — Warm Springs. —
The Holston River. — Knoxville. — Rich Landscapes. — En
Route to Chattanooga. — Athens and Cleveland. —
A Railway Centre. — Chattanooga and •
Its Wonderful Progress.
The space and purposes of this little book will permit only a hasty
review of what we saw and did on our way through Tennessee and the
states farther South. So hasty, in fact, that I think it will be best to bid
farewell to the gentle Prue and the gay Baily,
" 'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all ; "
and to speak hereafter in general terms of what the continuance of this
excursion, and subsequent winter travels, taught me to regard as the most
interesting routes of travel to and through the Gulf States of the Union.
The East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railroad, whose eastern
terminus is at Bristol, is a legitimate part of the railway system we have
been pursuing, since it follows that continuation of the Great Appalachian
Valley which lies between the highlands of western North Carolina and
the Cumberland mountains, and forms East Tennessee. It is a continu-
ous avenue between the mountain ranges and almost a direct line of rail-
way from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to Chattanooga, Tennessee.
East Tenessee presents many points of interest to the farmer, the
lover of out-door pictures, and the student of human nature. At Jones-
boro, just beyond Johnson City, was the first settlement in the state; a
company of Scotch-Irish immigrants to North Carolina having struggled
107
through the mountains and driven their stakes in that locality, where they
were soon joined by pioneers of German descent from Virginia. Won-
derful views of the mighty mountains which form the source of so many
great radiating rivers are caught southward across a rich and thickly occu-
pied region, as we push on toward Greenville, the most important
town, at the eastern end of the state. To Tennesseeans its history is
linked with many memorable names and events; but to the world gener-
ally this'pretty town is noteworthy chiefly as the home of Andrew Johnson,
whose house is out of sight, but whose monument is conspicuous upon a
ALONG THR UPPER FRENCH BROAD.
hill-top east of the village and close to the track. At Rogersville Junc-
tion is a station eating-house — there is one also at Jonesborough which I
forgot to mention in passing; and both can be most heartily recommended.
The branch road which comes in here is from Rogersville, an agricultura'l
and academical centre some fifteen miles to the north, in the midst of
quarries of the celebrated "Tennessee" fossiliferous marble, whose
mottled-brown color makes it so handsome and valuable. At several
stations between here and Morristown, the freight platforms are heaped
with blocks of this marble, which occurs widely throughout Hawkins
county.
108
Morristown has two thousand inhabitants, and promises to become a
place of great importance. Here branches the railway into North Caro-
lina, which, crossing to the French Broad at the mouth of the Nolichucky,
follows the former stream up into the heart of the mountains that rear
their magnificent forms against the southern horizon. Let us diverge
upon it for a moment.
Perhaps no river in the country is invested with more romance, and
is more highly worthy of its reputation for beauty, than the French
Broad. Born in the Swannanoa gap. its childish cascades leap and prat-
tle through fragrant thickets of rhododendron and azalea, whence it rushes
with fast-gained strength for miles and miles among the loftiest mountains
on the Atlantic slope. Many a talented pen (especially Christian Reid s)
has helped make famous this glorious region ; and it is hardly necessary
for me, at this late day, to more than mention the names Asheville and
Warm Springs, to fully remind all travelers of the comforts that await
them at the several centers of traffic and repose.
Asheville (reached by the Western North Carolina Railway, con-
necting with the Morristown Branch of the East Tennessee, Virginia and
Georgia), is the place from which most excursion parties take their depart-
ure for the exploration of the mountain region. Within a distance practi-
cable to walkers, or suitable to a morning's drive or ride upon horseback,
are a long list of eminences, each with its special adventures and view.
Varying this, charming nooks and fishing resorts occur along the
river ; alpine glens and ferneries ; and winding country roads, where the
queerest people and the most primitive home-life may be studied. From
the greater heights, like Pisgah, which are the object of more extended,
yet easy excursions, you may count scores of peaks exceeding six
thousand feet in height, and countless more approaching it. The ascent
of some of these is an easy matter ; to climb others becomes a teat
worthy of the Alpine Club, and one which stimulates many a laggard
ambition to unwonted effort and proud success. Branches of the West-
ern North Carolina Railway, as well as carriage roads and bridle paths,
give access to most of the prominent peaks, including Mitchell, the
captain of them all.
" Within a day's journey on horseback, are some of the finest fishing
streams in these mountains — Doe river and its branches in the Black
mountains, the east fork of Pigeon river, and still further on, the beauti-
ful Oconeelufty and Johnson's creek, the very paradise of trout fishers.
Ready means may be had here also for longer trips, if desired ; as, for
instance, through Heywood and Jackson counties to Franklin, in Macon
county, the Nantahala valley, and the country of the Cherokees, a band
of whom still remain in their old haunts, though the mass of their
brethren is beyond the Mississippi. The remote parts of the mount-
ains . . . abound in game — pheasants, turkeys, deer, wild-cats,
even bears and wolves. A party of four, with a tent, a pack-horse, and
a servant, at a moderate expense, and with great comfort and satisfaction,
might spend a week or two in such excursions, enjoy fine sport, see
100
scenery of exceeding interest and beauty, enjoy the delicious air of these
mountains, and gain the health and energy lost in the toilsome pursuits
of every-day occupations and harassments. The mountaineers are kind-
hearted and hospitable, and the country, save in remote places, is suf-
ficiently settled up to afford all necessary supplies which the gun and
rod could not furnish."
Of main interest to my readers, however, will be the information
that the long celebrated Warm Springs hotel, which stood in a beautiful
meadow-glade, some fifty miles down the French Broad from Asheville, at
the southern base of the Great Smoky, or Unaka mountains, and which
was burned during the winter of 1884-5, is about to be rebuilt in such
a way that it can accommodate better than ever the hosts of visitors
who find its surroundings as near an elysium as can reasonably be
expected in this world. Prue agrees with me, and adds that I must be
sure to tell you to re-read " The Land of the Sky," before you go thither.
While there is everything to interest in the far away landscapes un-
rolled before the traveler's eye between Morristown and Knoxville, he
sees that the district through which the railway runs is less populous and
of poorer quality, as farming or timber land, than that between Morristown
and Bristol. The general grade is a descending one, Bristol being 1,678
feet above the sea; Greenville, 1,581; Morristown 1,283; and Knoxville
900 — a decrease which continues in about the same ratio to Chattanooga.
The quality of the land is recovered when we reach the valley of the
Holston, a broad dignified stream, pouring steadily on to join the French
Broad, a few miiles below, and form the Tennessee. Zinc, iron and a
beautiful pink-veined marble occur in the ridges of this district, where
there are broad corn fields in the bottoms and rich pastures "upon a
thousand hills." Along this water course, which forms a straight avenue
up and down the great valley, ran the " Cherokee trail " or Indian high-
road; and almost where the track now passes, journeys of peace and
trading, and expeditions of war and rapine were conducted by the red
men, who have left only their musical names and crumbling earthworks
as monuments of their former dominion.
Knoxville is the chief town of East Tennessee and one of growing
wealth and importance. From a village of five or six thousand people
at the end of the civilwar, she has grown to a city of nearly twenty-five
thousand, and a head-quarters of unusual enterprise. Here are the
superintending offices of the great railway system we have been follow-
ing, whose ramifications extend to Florida, Louisiana, and the western
end of Tennessee. Here, too, comes in the Ohio division formed by the
roads from Louisville and Cincinnati, which converge at Jellico, on the
Kentucky state-line, and constitute what is called the "Jellico Route"
between the South and the North-west. This road crosses the jumbled
ridges and remote, sequestered valleys of the Cumberland mountains,
through the gaps made by the Clinch river. Cove creek, and the charm-
ing Elk valley. It is a wild, almost unknown region, and one of those
^110
by-ways which we like now and then to seek out and enjoy alone. South-
ward from Knoxville a road, projected to penetrate eastern Georgia, has
progressed some sixteen miles toward Chilhowee mountain. Here, also,
is practically the head of navigation on the river for steamboats, to load
which, fiatboats and rafts bring cargoes from forests, farms and quarries
far above.
These varied means of transportation have caused to be placed at
Knoxville extensive iron works, car factories and machine shops of var-
ious kinds, which employ a large number of skilled mechanics. The
population of the city is about half of northern or of foreign birth, and
an air of activity and modern progressiveness animates the whole com-
munity. Woolen mills are already in openration, and a large cotton mill
and woolen mill combined is under erection. Dozens of minor enter-
prises of the same character might be enumerated. As a trading town
Knoxville has a peculiar prominence considering its size and situation.
One firm alone of general merchants is said to do a business amounting
to nearly two millions of dollars annually. A dozen houses exist in the
city whose trade is wholly that of supplying country merchants with goods
at wholesale, and they are enabled to stand between the retailer and
eastern houses. Retail shops are numerous and well-filled, and agencies
of every kind flourish. Gay street, the main business thoroughfare, is
one of the most evenly and imposingly built-up avenues I know of in the
country; a street of which the city has just right to be proud as typifying
the completeness and solidity of its growth. To the man interested
in the material progress of this region, Knoxville is most instructive.
The city is an extremely pleasant one, too. Its climate is charming,
especially in winter, and its soil and situation most favorable for pro-
ducing fine effects in architecture and gardening. On bold bluffs that
steeply overlook the Tennessee river — a stream of inspiring stateliness
and beauty, bringing with it the message of a hundred fountain-pregnant
hills, and carrying the imagination fondly onward to its eternity in the
space of the undying sea — are set, not too densely, the homes of the
wealthy people of the town : homes replete with comfort and high cul-
ture. On a higher hill, remote from the thick of the town, and com-
manding a long extent of river and river cliffs, stands the University of
Tennessee, which has a most elevating influence on the city. Just back of
it is another hill upon Avhich the town is slowly encroaching, where stood
the heavy earthworks of Fort Saunders. Here, in 1864, occurred a
bloody battle, in the storming of the hill and the fort by Longstreet's
army, which found the defences too strong, and were compelled to retreat
with great loss. Knoxville was for a long time the head-quarters of the
Federal army in East Tennessee, and many of its citizens (as also the
great proportion of the mountain people) remained loyal to the Union
from first to last.
Looking northward from Fort Saunders, a large area of crowded
town is seen lying out in the sunshine on the plain and knolls a mile or
so back from the river. This is the newer part of the city, where it has
Ill
outgrown the old limits and has not had time to spread the shade trees
and cultivate the graces of the older portion. Many fine streets may
be found over there, however, and a western briskness characterises the
appearance of things.
Seen from some high point like the garden of Mr* Dickinson's
" Island " farm (which is a marvel of scientific agriculture, horticulture
and stock-raising in the South, and should be neglected by no visitor),
the country about Knoxville is, perhaps, as beautiful as can anywhere be
found in the United States. A broad river with rocky bluffs and tree-
grown margin; highly cultivated areas, dotted with copses and isolated
trees of countless species; patches of dark woodland, rising and falling
with the irregular undulations of the rugged surface; and lastly the lofty
and sublimely proportioned mountains which form so glorious a back-
ground;— all these surely might be pleasant, yet not fulfill the claim I
have made. But here they are so gracefully disposed and related to one
another, so rich in color, and " broad " in their arrangement and effect,
that if one feature were omitted all the rest would be greatly impaired.
But, to crown all, there is constantly in the atmosphere a moisture or
some sort of softening quality which etherealizes, rounds off and makes
gentle, soft and delicate, every object of the landscape it touches, until
you never weary of Nature's face or cease to be soothed and fascinated
by her loveliness.
Westward of Knoxville the country gradually becomes more open
and level, though the many heights of the complicated Unaka or Great
Smoky range still tower blue and very mountain-like in the south-east,
while the north-western sky rests upon the wooded ramparts of Walden's
ridge — an extension of the Cumberland mountain, which reaches diagon-
ally across the whole state. At Loudon, twenty-eight miles below Knox-
ville, the "Tanisee " is crossed upon an iron bridge eighteen hundred
feet in length, giving a lovely view from its height. Henceforth the
river is always west of the track. A short distance above the bridge
the Little Tennessee enters from the south. A small steamer plies
from Loudon to Kingston, a farming town at the mouth of the Clinch.
Great quantities of grain, brought by river steamers, are shipped upon
the cars at Loudon and Kingston. Sweetwater, Mouse creek, Athens,
and Riceville are stations of similar character, deriving their business
from the farming region surrounding them. Athens has a newspaper,
which has made a wide reputation, and its editor boasts of his town in
this seductive style: —
She has the most genial climate of the earth; the most substantial
court house in the state, the Wesleyan University, Athens Female Sem-
inary, seven churches, cotton mills, woolen and flouring mills, and the
prettiest girls under heaven's blue dome. In short, we are a God-
blessed set, worshiping under our own vine and fig-tree, hanging the
latch string on the outside, and inviting the world to come and enjoy
with us our happiness.
Sixteen miles from Athens, over a fine mountain road, take one
to the White Cliff Springs, three thousand feet above the sea and, there-
112
fore, in a pure and invigorating atmosphere, and enjoying a wide outlook.
Between Calhoun and Charleston, the beautiful Hiwassee is crossed, and
at Cleveland we halt for a dinner resembling Wordsworth's sweetheart:
" None knew thee but to love thee,
' None named thee but to praise."
Cleveland is a thriving town of some two thousand inhabitants and
contains much wealth, as is attested by the unusual elegance of its public
buildings and mansions and the well-regulated appearance of its streets
and sidewalks — a matter too often neglected in southern villages. Fine
roads radiate from it through a lovely country, and the accommoda-
tions for visitors are good. Cleveland, consequently, is coming to be
a favorite town for summer visitors from the far South, and winter resi-
dents escaping the chill of the North. The Ducktown copper mines
are about forty miles distant; the road to them passes for twenty miles
along the picturesque gorges of the Ocoee river, where it struggles out of
the great mountains.
Cleveland is the point where the two great arms of the East Tennes-
see Virginia and Georgia Railway diverge. One arm reaches westward
via Chattanooga, Decatur, and Corinth to Memphis and Trans-Missis-
sippi connections. The other reaches southward to Rome, Georgia, and
there divides: one branch proceeding through Atlanta and Macon to
Brunswick, Savannah and Jacksonville; the other crossing Alabama via
Calera and Selma to Meridian, and so on to Texas, and also via Calera
and Montgomery to Mobile and New Orleans.
After a few words about the city of Chattanooga, which we have
reached over the roughly wooded and rocky knolls about Oeltewah, and
by tunneling underneath the blood-stained bulwark of Mission ridge, a
final chapter of this little book will be devoted to explaining this southern
system of transportation routes.
Before the war of the Secession Chattanooga was a miserable,
muddy little village with an iron forge or two and some river-trading,
but of no account to itself or the world in general. Seized upon
as a strategic point and depot of supplies by the Confederates, when
that war first broke out, it was fortified with the greatest possible
strength and thought impregnable. Apprised of its danger by the
approach of the army of the Cumberland over the ruins of strongholds
in Kentucky and northern Tennessee, startled by the shock of Chick-
amauga and nerved to a last stand in Tennessee, it witnessed the terrific
series of battles, of which those at Mission ridge and Lookout mountain
were the most prominent episodes, and finally saw its defenders swept
back from its forts.
Transformed in a day from a disloyal to a loyal stronghold, it
formed scarcely more than a camp and quarter-master's depot for many
months. Finally the flood of soldiers retreated and left Chattanooga
more miserable and muddy than ever. But among those conquerors
were shrewd men. When the war was over they went back there,
bought town lots, farms, and mining rights. The citizens returned and
113
help came from friends at other points. The qualities of situation and
surrounding which had made it long ago a centre of Indian trails and
traffic, which had caused armies to contest for its possession as a basis
of military operations, now presented it to the business man as the most
favorable spot in the district for his commercial and manufacturing
schemes. Railways converged there; agents of big concerns north
and south made it general head-quarters ; wholesale merchants competed
for the local trade of a wide area; and the close proximity and easy
"haul ' of coal and minerals caused iron furnaces and rolling mills,
metal factories and shops of every sort to be set up. Three-fourths at
least of the citizens now (the population is nearly 25,000) are northern ;
the town is new and growing with rapid strides ; the old-fashioned incom-
modious structures of the ante-bellum village have disappeared, and a
rough, vigorous, active city has arisen, which is more like a town in
Colorado than in sleepy South Tennessee. Thus far, as I say, the rough-
ness of new construction and the vigor of business-haste is predominant
in Chattanooga, and she is by no means lovely ; but many fine buildings
have been or are being erected ; streets of ornate residences crown the
heights above the noisy plain; and in a few years, under the fostering
care of wealth and intelligence, and in the gracious climate which
belongs to that region, Chattanooga will have grown out of this awk-
wardness into assured strength and admirable appearance.
XVIII.
A CHAPTER EXPLANATORY.
Memphis and Charleston Railway. — Blue Mountain Route to New Orleans and
Mexico. — Florida Short Line. — Farewell and Bon Voyage.
It is the peculiarity of the South, as a whole, that its large towns
are mainly placed along the coast or else under the edge of the mount-
ains. Travelers whose destination is some small interior point have
rarely a choice of routes, but must take that which carries them nearest.
The main body of travelers, however, go from the North to some one of
the southern seacoast cities or else come out of the South bound to one
or the other of the great centres of civilization in the North. There is a
third, and growing, class of travelers, who pass through the South en
route to the far West, or in returning from Texas, Mexico and the Pacific,
who wisely prefer the ever-varied scenery and pleasant climate of
the Southern mountain region, and its opportunity of stopping at
Washington and famous resorts, to the tiresome monotony of the
Prairie states. To these "through" travelers, a few words of explan-
ation in respect to the main routes traversing the South will well round
out this little book
We have been facing southward and will continue so, standing at
Chattanooga, on the very border of the Cotton and Gulf states. Sup-
114
posing we were going to Memphis, and, perhaps, westward, there is
open to us a route over the tracks of the Memphis and Charleston Rail-
way which follows the Tennessee until it turns northward at the corner
of Mississippi, and then passes on to Memphis through Corinth and
Moscow. At Memphis a road may be taken straight across to Little
Rock, Ark,, where it meets the Missouri Pacific Railway system (via
Hot Springs, Ark.), to middle and northern Texas, forming the most
direct route between New York, New England and Texas or Mexico.
There is also a very direct and pleasant railway track from Memphis to
Kansas City, and to the prairies of southern Kansas beyond which the
traveler may keep straight on by that most interesting of all " trails" to
the Pacific coast, the "Santa Fe Route," which goes by the way of
Pueblo and Salt Lake City through the heart of the Rocky mountains.
If, however, Mexico, southern Texas or Louisiana be the destination
or starting point, then a choice of two paths is offered, converging at
Calera, near the centre of Alabama, and labeled the "Blue Mountain
Route " in the advertisements of the ticket agents. Leaving Chatta-
nooga (or Cleveland), Tenn., the road at first passes through the hilly
country of northern Georgia, where the names Cohutta, Dalton, Plain-
ville, Kenesaw mountain and Rome will recall the sturdy fighting be-
tween the inevitable Sherman and the stubborn Hood. Passing out
of these rugged hills into the more level but still pleasant country of
north-eastern Alabama, the road skirts the iron district of that state
(passing through the large new town of Anniston, where a connection
is made for Birmingham), and pushes straight south-westward to Selma,
This is a centre of much importance. From Selma railroads diverge to
Montgomery, to Pensacola, to Mobile and eastward to Meridian, Miss.
Meridian is another centre westward; a railway goes "straight as a
string " to Jackson (whence a branch to Natchez), to Vicksburg, Shreve-
port and Marshall, connecting at the last point with the railway network
of the Lone Star state. Some passengers may prefer this route to Texas
over that by the way of Memphis. It is, perhaps, rather more interesting
and there is no great difference, if any, in the time or expense. On both,
the trains make fast time, run Sundays, are well equipped, provided with
Pullman sleeping cars, and require no change of day coaches between
Memphis and Chattanooga or Selma and Cleveland.
To go to New Orleans two courses are open. From Cleveland or
Chattanooga one route is (as before) via Rome, Ga., and Anniston,
to Calera, Ala. ; thence you may go on to Meridian and down to New
Orleans by the just completed New Orleans and North Eastern. Or, you
may diverge at Calera and reach New Orleans by the old route through
Montgomery (the capital of Alabama, and former seat of the Confederate
government) Pensacola Junction (giving access to the famous naval
station) and Mobile, the fashionable metropolis of the state. This way
go Pullman sleeping cars and a most convenient arrangement of
coaches. It takes in the largest towns, and, between Mobile and New
Orleans, passes along the Gulf coast of Mississippi, giving charming
115
glimpses of the sea-shore scenes and life, more like those of Italy than
the Atlantic coast of the United States. By the way of Meridian, on
the other hand, one passes through the very heart of the cotton and cane-
brake region, and thus becomes acquainted with the sentiment and ap-
pearance of that remote, unruffled, agricultural life which formed the career
of the greater part of the South under the old order of things.
All of these roads which pass through Meridian, Calera, and Rome
to Cleveland, are united in a traffic arrangement of through tickets and
through cars under the appropriate name of the " Blue Mountain Route,"
since for a thousand miles the traveler by it from Georgia northward, is
within sight or actually upon either the Blue Ridge, or the azure Alle-
ghanies. At one end is Texas and N'ezv Orleans; at the other Cincinnati
(via Knoxville and Jellico), and Neiv York, via the Shenandoah Valley.
There is another region in the South, however, to which Northern
eyes turn when Winter's blustering winds beat upon a shrinking world.
I mean Florida — called the Land of Flowers by Ponce de Leon, but
which one might more truthfully name the Land of Winter Sunshine.
Many of these travelers are invalids. To them speed and comfort are
qualities of the highest importance in the chosen means of trans-
portation. Suppose again that the traveler has reached Cleveland from
Chicago, Cincinnati or Louisville by the way of Jellico; or from the
North-east by the way of the Shenandoah; or that he has come to Chatta-
nooga from the North-west. He is now at the fork of the roads — at the
portal to the Florida his eyes foresee. The quickest way is to him the
best. Georgia has not much to show in the way of scenery. When one
gets south of the Kenesaw heights, where Sherman fought his terrible
way to Atlanta, the landscape becomes level and the interest agricultural.
Quickness and comfort, then, as I say, are the desiderata. As for rate of
speed per mile, and the ease of a Pullman car, one first-class railway
is much like another ; but the advantages of the line which goes by the
way of Atlanta, Macon and Jesup, are that its course is more than loo
miles shorter than any other route (as one can easily see by a glance at
the map), and that it is able to run both its Pullman sleeping cars (all
the year round) and its passenger coaches from Cleveland and Chatta-
nooga to Jacksonville without change — a ride of twenty-four hours. This,
then, has justly assumed the name of the " Florida Short Line " — talis-
manic words at the ticket office !
Subsidiary advantages are, that this route permits a halt at Atlanta
■'the Chicago of the South," whence half a dozen local roads diverge.
Then it follows for some time Sherman's " March to the Sea," always
interesting. At Macon, east-and-west roads cross the state in four
directions. At Jesup, Savannah and Brunswick may be reached by
changing cars; while at Waycross, a road diverges across the southern
margin of Georgia into western Florida and the cotton and orange region
between Tallahassee and Mobile.
In review, then:
To Memphis, Little Rock, Hot Springs and northern Texas; or tq
116
Kansas, Colorado, and the Pacific coast via Pueblo (or vice versa), the
only path is over the Memphis and Charleston Railroad — that is, via
Chattanooga, Decatur and Corinth.
To Texas, Mexico, and New Orleans, the advisable course is by one
or another division (via Mobile or via Meridian) of the " Blue Mountain
Route,' that is, by the way of Calera.
To Florida, every consideration favors the " Florida Short Line,"
via Atlanta and yesiip.
And so — Farewell, and a pleasant journey to you!
WINTER EXCURSIONS
BY THE
Shenandoah Valley I Kennesaw Routes,
TO JACKSONVILLE, FLA.
No. 1.
From NORFOLK, VA., PETERS-
BURG, VA., BURKEVILLE, VA.,
LYNCHBURG, VA., and ROAN-
OKE, VA.
No. 2.
From HAGERSTOWN, MD., SHEN-
ANDOAH JUNCTION, WEST VA.,
LURAY, VA., RIVERTON, VA.,
PORT REPUBLIC, VA., and
WAYNESBORO JUNCTION, VA.
Route 1.— Norfolk & Western R. R. to
Bristol ; East Tennessee, Virginia &
Georgia R. R. to Jesup ; Savannah,
Florida & Western R. R. to Jackson-
ville.
Route 2. — Shenandoah Valley R. R. to
Roanoke ; Norfolk & Western R. R. to
Bristol ; East Tennessee, Virginia &
Georgia R. R. to Jesup ; Savannah,
Florida & Western R. R. to Jackson-
ville.
From RICHMOND.
Richmond & Alleghany R. R. to Lynch-
burg, thence to destination as above.
Route No. 1.
or
Richmond & Petersburg R. R. to Peters-
burg, thence to destination as above.
Route No. 1,
From NEW YORK, PHILADEL-
PHIA & PENNSYLVANIA R. R.
POINTS, Via HARRISBURG.
Pennsylvania R. R. to Harrisburg;
Cumberland Valley R. R. to Hagerstown ;
thence to destination as above. Route
No. 2.
From BALTIMORE.
Western Maryland R. R. to Hagers-
town ; thence to destination as above.
Route No. 2.
or
Baltimore & Ohio R. R. to Shenandoah
Junction, thence to destination as above.
Route No. 2.
From WASHINGTON and BALTI-
MORE & OHIO R. R. POINTS.
Baltimore & Ohio R. R. to Shenandoah
Junction, thence to destination as above.
Route No. 2.
From NEW^ YORK, PHILADEL-
PHIA, W^ILMINGTON and BAL-
TIMORE, via WASHINGTON.
Pennsylvania R. R. to Washington :
Virginia Midland to Lynchburg, thence to
destination as above. Route No. 1.
From WASHINGTON, CHAR-
LOTTESVILLE, and VIRGINIA
MIDLAND STATIONS.
Virginia Midland R. R. to Lynchburg,
thence to destination as above. Route
No. 1.
LIST OF IGENTS
OF THE
SHEf[Af 0/H V/LLEY HOUTE Ap KeNNES/W I}0UTE,
WHO WILL FURNISH TOURISTS GUIDE-BOOKS, TIME-TABLES,
AND ALL INFORMATION OF RATES, ROUTES, TICKETS,
SLEEPING-CAR RESERVATIONS, ETC., ETC.
C. P. Gaither, Agt 290 Washington St. , Boston, Mass .
H. V. Tompkins, East. Pass. Agt 303 Broadway, New York.
B. H. Feltwell, Pass. Agt 838 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, Pa.
C. M.. Futterer, Pass. Agt Hagerstown, Md.
W. H. Fitzgerald, Agt 157 W. Baltimore St., Baltimore, Md.
E. J. LocKWOOD, Pass. Agt 507 Penna. Ave., Washington, D. C.
Allen Hull, Pass. Agt . . , Roanoke, Va.
T. H. Bransford, Agt Roanoke, Va,
J. F. Cecil, Agt Norfolk, Va.
Warren L. Rohr, Ticket Agt Lynchburg, Va ,
W. C. Carrington, Ticket Agt. .Bristol, Tenn,
J. M. Sutton, Pass. Agt Chattanooga, Tenn.
James Maloy, Pass. Agt. . .... .- '. ... Atlanta, Ga.
L. A. Jeter, Ticket Agt Macon, Ga .
B. H. Hopkins, Pass. Agt.. .Cor. Bay & Hogan Sts., Jacksonville, Fla.
R. H. Hudson, Pass. Agt : .Montgomery, Ala.
J. C. Andrews, Gen. South'n Agt.. .158 Common St., New Orleans, La.
Eugene Sutcliffe, Pass. Agt Memphis, Tenn .
P. R. Rogers, W. Pass. Agt..... .., Little Rock, Ark.
A. POPK, Gen I Pass, and Ticket Agent,
Norfolk & Western and Shenandoah Valley R. Rs.,
Roanoke, Virginia.
B, W. WRENN, Gen' I Pass, and Ticket Agent,
E, T. V. & G. R. R., Knoj^ville, Tennef^see,
DIRECTORY OF AGENCIES.
WHERE THROUGH TICKETS — BOTH STRAIGHT AND ROUND-TRIP -
FLORIDA, NEW ORLEANS AND SUMMER EXCURSION— ARE SOLD,
INFORMATION GIVEN, TIME-CARDS FURNISHED, AND
SLEEPING-CAR BERTHS AND SECTIONS RESERVED
TO ALL POINTS ON OR VIA THE RAILWAYS OF THE
SHENANDOAH VALLEY AND KENNESAW ROUTES.
IN THE NORTH AND EAST.
BOSTON, at No. 3 Old State House; 205,
211, 214, 232 and 322 Washington Street;
and at the Depots of the New York
Lines, and Office of Line, 290 Washing-
ton Street.
Also, at Railroad Ticket Offices at Provi-
dence, Worcester, Springfield, Hartford
New Haven, Bridgeport, Stamford, etc.
NEW YORK, at No. i Aslor House; No.
8 Battery Place ; 315, 435, 849 and 943
Broadway; and 168 East 125th Street;
Depots foot of Desbrosses and Cort-
landt Streets, and Office of Line, 303
Broadway.
BROOKLYN, at No. 4 Court Street, and
Office of Brooklyn Annex, foot of Ful-
ton Street.
JERSEY CITY, at Penn. R. R. Depot
Ticket Office; also, at Passenger Station
Ticket Offices, Penn. R. R. at Newark,
Elizabeth, Rahway, New Brunswick,
and Trenton, N. J.
PHILADELPHIA, at Nos.838, iiooand
1348 Chestnut Street ; and at Depot,
Broad and Market Streets; also, at R.R.
Ticket Offices Penn R. R., at German-
town, Pa., Chester, Pa., Wilmington,
Del.
HARRISBURG, at Ticket Office, Cum-
berland Valley R. R.
PITTSBURG, at Depot Ticket Offices.
BALTIMORE, at Ticket Office, Western
Maryland R. R., 133 West Baltimore
Street ; at Depot Western Maryland
R. R.; and Office of Line, 157 West
Baltimore Street.
WASHINGTON, at Depot of the Balti-
more & Ohio R. R.; at Depot Penn. R.
R.; also, 601 Penn. Ave.; and Office of
the Line, 507 Pennsylvania Avenue.
NORFOLK, at Office, W. T. Walke,
Ticket Agent, under Atlantic Hotel ;
W. I. Flournoy, Ticket Agent, Purcell
House ; also, at Depot N. & W R. R.
RICHMOND, at Depot Richmond &
Petersburg, Richmond & Danville, and
Richmond & Alleghany R. Rs.; also,
at 1000 Main Street, A. W. Garber &
Co., General Agents, 1200 Main Street.
S. H. Bowman, Ticket Agent.
HAGERSTOWN, Md., at Ticket Office,
Shenandoah Valley R. R,
ROANOKE, Va., at Depot Shenandoah
Valley and Norfolk & Western Railr'ds,
And at Coupon Ticket Offices of all lines connecting at Harrisburg, Washington,
Hagerstown and Shenandoah Junction.
IN THE SOUTH AND SOUTHV^EST.
ATLANTA, Ga., at Ticket Office, Depot
East Tenn., Va. & Ga. R. R., and W.
& A. R. R. Ticket Office,
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn.. at Depot
Ticket Office E. T. V. & G. R. R.
MACON, Ga., at Depot Ticket Office,
and at 102 Mulberry Street.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla., at Ticket Office
S. F. & W. R. R., and Office of Line,
corner West Bay & Hogan Streets.
ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla., Ticket Office,
S. F. & W. R. R,
SAVANNAH, Ga., at Ticket Office S. F.
& W. R. R., and Central R. R. of Ga.
VICKSBURG, Miss., at Depot Ticket
Office, V. & M. R. R.
MERIDIAN, Miss, at Depot Ticket
Offices E. T. V. & G, R. R., and Ala.
Gt. So. R. R.
SELMA, Ala., at Depot Ticket Office
E. T. V. &G. R. R.
MONTGOMERY, Ala., at Depot of
West Ala, R., and L. & N. R. R.
AND AT TICKET QFFICES
MOBILE, Ala., at Ticket Office Battlp
House, and Depot Ticket Offices L.& N.
R.R. and M. & O. R.R.
NEW ORLEANS, La., at Ticket Officeg
and Depots of L. & N. R. R., Illinois
Central R. R., N. O. & N. E. R. R., and
Office of Line, 158 Common Street.
GALVESTON. Texas, at 116 Tremont
Street, and Depot Ticket Offices G. H.
&H. R. R.
HOUSTON, Texas, at Depot Ticket
Offices T. & N. O. R. R., and I. & Gt.
N. R. R.
SAN ANTONIO, Texas, at Ticket Office
and Depot of G. H. & S. A. R. R.
MEMPHIS, Tenn., at Main Street Ticket
Office, Barney Hughes, Ticket Agent -
and Depot M. & C. R. R.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark., at Depot Ticket
Office M. & Little Rock R. R.
TEXARKANA, Texas, at Depot Ticket
Office St. L. & I. Mt. R. R.
DALLAS, Texas, at Depot Ticket Office
Texas & Pacific R. R.
Of all connecting LfNEg.
ITINERARY OF ROUTES
By which Florida, New Orleans, Luray, Natural Bridge, and
THE Noted Summer Excursion Resorts of Virginia are
Reached Quickest, Cheapest and Best.
The Shen/ndoah Valley Route —The Kemes/w Route,
AND THEIR CONNECTING RAILWAY LINES.
ALSO,
To New Orleans and the World's Exposition ! !
GROUP A.
From NORFOLK, PETERSBURG,
BURKEVILLE, FARMVILLE,
LYNCHBURG, LIBERTY, ROAN-
OKE, MARION, ABINGDON, and
other Principal Towns and Cities.
GROUP B.
From HAGERSTOWN, SHEPHERDS-
TOWN, SHENANDOAH JUNC-
TION, BOYCE, LURAY, RIVER-
TON, WAYNESBORO JUNCTION,
natural BRIDGE, BUCHANAN,
Etc.. Etc., Etc.
ROUTES— GROUP A.
No. 1.— Norfolk & Western R. R. to
Bristol ; East Tenn., Va. & Ga. R. R. to
Calera; Louisville & Nashville to New
Orleans.
No. 2.— Norfolk, & Western R. R. to
Bristol ; East Tenn.. Va. & Ga. R. R. to
Atlanta; A. & W. Point R. R. to West
Point ; Western Railway of Ala. to Mont-
gomery ; Louisville & Nashville R. R. to
New Orleans.
No. 3.— Norfolk & Western R. R. to
Bristol; East Tenn., Va. & Ga. R. R. to
Dalton; Western & Atlantic R. R. to
Atlanta ; A. & West Point R. R. to West
Point ; Western Railway of Ala. to Mont-
g-omery; L. &. N. R. R. to New Orleans.
No. 4.— Norfolk & Western R. R. to
Bristol ; East Tenn., Va. & Ga. R. R. to
Chattanoog-a ; Queen & Crescent Route
to New Orleans.
No. .5.— Norfolk & Western R. R. to
Bristol ; East Tenn., Va. & Ga. R. R. to
Chattanooga ; Memphis & Charleston to
Grand Junction ; Illinois Central to New
Orleans.
ROUTES— GROUP B.
No. 1. — Shenandoah Valley R. R. to
Roanoke ; Norfolk & Western R. R. to
Bristol ; East Tenn., Va. & Ga. R. R. to
Calera ; Louisville & Nashville R. R. to
New Orleans.
No. 2.— Shenandoah Valley R. R. to
Roanoke ; Norfolk & Western R. R. to
Bristol ; East Tenn., Va. & Ga. R. R. to
Atlanta ; Atlanta & West Point R. R. to
West Point ; Western Railway of Ala. to
Montgomery; Louisville & Nashville R.R.
to New Orleans.
No. 3.— Shenandoah Valley R. R. to
Roanoke ; Norfolk & Western R. R. to
Bristol; East Tenn.. Va. & Ga. R. R. to
Dalton ; Western & Atlantic R. R. to
Atlanta; Atlanta & West Point R. R. to
West Point ; Western Railway of Ala. to
Montg-omery ; Louisville & Nashville R.
R. to New Orleans.
No. 4— Shenandoah Valley R. R. to
Roanoke ; Norfolk & Western R. R. to
Bristol ; East Tenn., Va. & Ga. R. R. to
Chattanooga; Queen & Crescent Route to
New Orleans.
No. 5.— Shenandoah Valley R. R. to
Roanoke ; Norfolk & Western R. R. to
Bristol ; East Tenn., Va. & Ga. R. R. to
Chattanooga ; Memphis & Charleston R.
R. to Grand Junction ; Illinois Central
R. R. to New Orleans.
From RICHMOND,
Richmond & Alleghany R. R. to Lynch-
burg, thence to destination as per routes
named in Group A.
or
Richmond & Petersburg R. R. to Peters-
burg, thence to destination as per routes
given in Group A.
From NEW YORK, PHILADEL-
PHIA and PENNSYLVANIA R. R.
POINTS, Via HARRISBURG.
Pennsylvania R. R. to H a r r i s b u r g ;
Cumberland Valley R. R. to Hagerstown,
thence to destination as per routes given
in Group B.
From BALTIMORE.
Western Maryland R. R. to Hagers-
town, thence to destination as per routes
given in Group B.
or
Baltimore & Ohio R. R. to Shenandoah
Junction, thence to destination as per
routes given in Group B.
From WASHINGTON and BALTI-
MORE & OHIO R. R. POINTS.
Baltimore & Ohio R. R. to Shenandoah
Junction, thence to destination as per
routes given in Group B.
From NEW YORK, PHILADEL-
PHIA, W^ILMINGTON AND BAL-
TIMORE, via WASHINGTON.
Pennsylvania R. R. to Washington, Vir-
ginia Midland R. R. to Lynchburg, thence
to destination as per routes given in
Group A.
From WASHINGTON, CHAR-
LOTTESVILLE and STATIONS
ON VA. MIDLAND R. R.
• Virginia Midland R. R. to Lynchburg,
thence to destination as per routes given
in Group A.
121
GROUP A.
Afton, Va.
Clifton Forgfe, Va.
Covington, Va.
Goshen, Va.
Greenbrier White Sulphur, W. Va.
Kanawha Falls, W. Va.
Millboro, Va.
Staunton, Va.
The above resorts are located immedi-
ately on line of Chesapeake & Ohio Rail-
way, and are reached without staging.
GROUP B.
Bath Alum, Va. — Millboro.
Cold Sulphur, Va. — Goshen.
Hot or Healing, V z..— Covington.
Millboro Springs, Va. — Millboro.
Mountain Top House, Va. — Afton.
Rockbridge Baths, Va. — Goshen.
Salt Sulphur, W. Va. — Fort Springs.
Stribling, Va. — Staunton.
Sweet Chalybeate, Va. — Alleghany.
Walawhatoola, Va. — Millboro.
The above resorts are located off^ the
line of Chesapeake & Ohio Railway.
Station in italic type indicates point of
departure from railroad and where stage
must be taken.
GROUP C.
Dagger's Springs, Va. — Gala IVater.
Rockbridge Alum Springs, Va. — Lexing-
ton.
Located ojf line of Richmond & Alle-
ghany Railroad. Station in italic type
indicates point of departure from rail-
road, and where stage must be taken.
GROUP D.
Abingdon, Va.
Big Springs, Va.
Big Tunnel, Va.
Blue Ridge Springs, Va.
Buford's, "
Chnstiansburg "
Dublin,
Egglestons, "
Gishs, "
Glade Springs, "
Liberty, "
Marion, "
Montgomery White, "
Roanoke, "
Rural Retreat, "
Salem, "
Saltville, "
Wytheville, "
The above resorts are located on line of
Norfolk & Western Railroad, and are
reached without staging.
GROUP E.
Alleghany Springs, Va. — Sha^vsville.
Bedford Alum Springs, Va. — Forest.
Blacksburg Springs,Va. — Christiansburg.
Botetourt Springs, Va. — Salevi.
Chillhowee Springs, Va. — Greevers.
Coyner's Springs, Va. — Bonsacks.
Farmville Lithia, Ya.—Farmville.
Hunter's Alum Springs, Va. — Dublin.
Lake Springs, Ya.— Salem.
Monroe Red Sulphur Springs, W. Va.—
Glen Lyn.
Mountain \.-sk^^y-&.—Staytide.
Pulaski Alum Springs, Va. — Dublin.
Roanoke Red Sulphur Springs, Va. —
Salem.
Seven Springs, Va. — Glade Springs.
Sharon Springs, Va. — Wytheville.
Washington Springs,Va. — Glade Springs.
Yellow Sulphur Springs,Va. — Christians-
burg.
The above springs are located oJf the
line of Norfolk & Western railroad." Sta-
tion in italic type indicates point of
departure from railroad, and where stage
or hack must be taken.
GROUP F.
Berryville, Va.
Buchanan, Va.
Charlestown, W. Va.
Hagerstown, Md.
Luray, Va.
Roanoke, Va.
Shepherdstown, W. Va.
White Post, Va.
The above resorts are located on line of
Shenandoah Valley railroad, and are
reached without staging.
GROUP G.
Almirida, Va. — Berryville.
Baker's Springs, Va. — Waynesboro.
Botetourt, Va. — Cloverdale.
Bon Air, Va. — Elkton.
Fincastle Mineral, Va. — Cloverdale.
Natural Bridge, Va. — Natural Bridge.
Rockingham Springs, Va. — Elkton.
The Vineyard, Va. — Boyceville.
The above resorts are located oJf\m^ of
Shenandoah Valley railroad. Station in
italic type indicates point of departure
from railroad, and where stage or hack
must be taken.
GROUP H.
Capon Springs, W. Va. — Capon.
Rawley Springs, Va. — Harrisonburg.
Shenandoah Alum Springs, Va. — Mt
Jackson.
Orkney Springs, Va. — Mt, Jackson.
The above resorts are located online of
Valley Branch, Baltimore & Ohio rail-
road. The station in italic type indicates
point of departure from railroad, and
where stage or hack must be taken.
GROUP I.
Old Point Comfort, Va.
GROUP J.
Chambersburg, Pa.
Greencastle, Pa.
Mechanicsburg, Pa.
Shippensburg, Pa,
The above resorts are located on line of
Cumberland Valley Railroad, and are
reached without staging.
GROUP K.
Warm Springs, N. C.
Asheville, N. C.
The above resorts are located on line of
Western North Carolina R. R., and are
reached without staging.
123
SUMMER EXCURSION ROUTES,
Prom NORFOLK, VA.
To resorts named in Group A.
Norfolk & Western Railroad to Peters-
burg'. Richmond & Petersburg- Railroad
to Richmond. Transfer to Chesapeake
& Ohio Depot. Chesapeake & Ohio Rail-
way to destination.
To resorts named in Group B.
Norfolk & Western Railroad to Peters-
burg. Richmond & Petersburg Railroad
to Richmond. Transfer to Chesapeake &
Ohio Depot. Chesapeake & Ohio Railway-
to nearest station. Stage to destination.
To resorts named in Group C.
Norfolk & Western Railroad to Lynch-
burg-. Richmond & Alleghany to nearest
station. Stage to destination.
To resorts na-med in Group D.
Norfolk & Western Railroad to desti-
nation.
To resorts named in Group E.
Norfolk & Western Railroad to nearest
station. Stage or hack to destination.
To resorts nained in Group F.
Norfolk &Western Railroad lo Roanoke.
Shenandoah Valley Railroad to destina-
tion.
To resorts named in Group G.
Norfolk &Western Railroad to Roanoke.
Shenandoah Valley Railroad to nearest
station. Stage to destination.
To resorts named in Group H.
Norfolk & Western Railroad to Peters-
burg. Richmond & Petersburg Railroad
to Richmond. Transfer to Chesapeake
& Ohio Depot. Chesapeake & Ohio Rail-
road to Staunton. Valley Branch, Balti-
more & Ohio to nearest station. Stage to
destination.
or
Norfolk &Western Railroad to Roanoke.
Shenandoah Valley Railroad to Waynes-
boro'. Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad to
Staunton. Valley Branch, Baltimore &
Ohio Railroad to nearest station. Stage
to destination.
To resorts nam.ed in Group J.
Norfolk & Western Railroad to Roan-
ake. Shenandoah Valley Railroad to Ha-
gerstown. Cumberland Valley Railroad
to destination.
To resorts na77ied in Group K.
Norfolk & Western Railroad to Bristol.
East Tennessee, Virginia & Georgia Rail-
road to Unaka. Western North Carolina
R.ailroa4 to nearest; station.
From PETERSBURG.
To resorts najned in Group C.
Norfolk & Western Railroad to Lynch-
burg. Richmond & Alleghany Railroad
to nearest station. Stage to destination.
To resorts natned in Group D.
Norfolk & Western Railroad to destina-
tion.
To resorts named in Group E.
Norfolk & Western Railroad to nearest
station. Stage or hack to destination.
To resorts nained in Group F.
Norfolk & Western Railroad to Roan-
oke. Shenandoah Valley Railroad to des-
tination.
To resorts naiiied in Group G.
Norfolk & Western Railroad to Roanoke.
Shenandoah Valley Railroad to nearest
station. Stage or hack to destination.
To resorts natned in Group H.
Norfolk & Western Railroad to Roan-
oke. Shenandoah Valley Railroad to
Waynesboro. Chesapeake & Ohio Rail-
road to Staunton. Valley Branch, Bal-
timore & Ohio to nearest station. Stage
or hack to destination.
OLD POINT COMFORT, VA.
Norfolk & Western Railroad to Norfolk.
Bay Line steamer to Old Point.
To resorts named in Group K.
Norfolk & Western Railroad to Bristol.
East Tennessee,Virginia & Georgia Rail-
road to Unaka. Western North Carolina
Railroad to destination.
From WELDON, GOLDSBORO, RA^
LEIGH {via Weldon), WILMING-
TON, CHARLES TO N, SAVAN-
NAH, COLUMBIA {via W. C. & A.
R.R.), JACKSONVILLE {via Char-
leston).
Take the Atlantic Coast Line to Petersr
burg, Va., thence to destination. (See
routes from Petersburg.)
From RICHMOND, VA.
To resorts named in Group D.
Richmond & Petersburg Railroad to
Petersburg. Norfolk & Western Railroad
to destination.
or
Richmond & Alleghany Railroad to
Lynchburg. Norfolk & Western Railroad
to destination.
To resorts named in Group E.
Richmond & Petersburg Railroad to
Petersburg. Norfolk & Western Railroad
to nearest station. Stage or hack to des-
tination.
or
Richmond & Alleghany Railroad to
Lynchburg, Thence as above.
129
To resorts named in Group F.
Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad toWaynes-
boro. Shenandoah Valley Railroad to
destination.
To resorts named in Group G.
Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad toWaynes-
boro. Shenandoah Valley Railroad to
nearest station. Stage or hack to destina-
tion.
To OLD POINT COMFORT, Va.
Richmond & Petersburg Railroad to
Petersburg. Norfolk & Western Railroad
to Norfolk. Bay Line Steamer to Old
Point.
To resorts named in Group K.
Richmomd & Petersburg Railroad to
Petersburg. Norfolk & Western Railroad
to Bristol. East Tennessee, Virginia &
Georgia Railroad to Unaka. Western
North Carolina Railroad to destination.
or
Richmond & Alleghany Railroad to
Lynchburg. Thence as above.
To resorts named in Group J.
Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad to Waynes-
boro. Shenandoah Valley Railroad to
Hagerstown. Cumberland Valley Rail-
road to destination.
From HAGERSTOWN, SHENAN-
DOAH JUNCTION and RIVER-
TON JUNCTION.
To resorts named in Group A.
Shenandoah Valley Railroad to Waynes-
Doro. Chesapeake &l Ohio Railroad to
destination.
To resorts named in Group B.
Shenandoah Valley Railroad to Waynes-
boro. Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad to
nearest station. Stage or hack to desti-
nation.
To resorts named in Group D.
Shenandoah Valley Railroad to Roan-
oke. Norfolk & Western Railroad to
destination.
To resorts named in Group E.
Shenandoah Valley Railroad to Roan-
oke. Norfolk & Western Railroad to
nearest station. Stage or hack to desti-
nation.
To resorts riamed in Group F.
Shenandoah Valley Railroad to destina-
tion.
To resorts narned in Group G.
Shenandoah Valley Railroad to nearest
station. Stage or hack to destination.
To resorts named in Group H.
Shenandoah Valley Railroad to Waynes-
boro. Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad to
Staunton. Valley Branch, Baltimore &
Ohio Railroad to nearest station. Stage
or hack to destination.
To OLD POINT COMFORT, V^.
Shenandoah Valley Railroad to Roan-
oke. Norfolk & Western Railroad to
Norfolk. Bay Line steamer to Old Point.
To resorts named in Group K.
Shenandoah Valley Railroad to Roan-
oke. Norfolk & Western Railroad to Bris-
tol. East Tennessee, Virginia & Georgia
Railroad to Unaka. Western North
Carolina Railroad to nearest station.
From NEW YORK, PHILADEL^
PHIA and P. R. R. points, via
Harrisburg.
Pennsylvania Railroad to Harrisburg^
Pa. Cumberland Valley Railroad to
Hagerstown. Thence to destination. (See
routes from Hagerstown^ Md.)
From BALTIMORE.
Western Maryland Railroad to Hagers-
town. Thence to destination. (See routes
from Hagerstown, Aid.)
From WASHINGTON and Bait. &
Ohio R. R. points, via B. & O.
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad to Shenan-
doah Junction. Thence to destination.
(See routes from Shenandoah Junction.)
From WASHINGTON, via Va. Mid.
R. R. & Manassas Branch.
Virginia Midland Railroad (Manassas
Branch) to Riverton. Thence to destina-
tion. (See routes ixova. River tonj unction.)
From WASHINGTON and CHAR-
LOTTESVILLE, via Lynchburg.
To resorts named in Group D.
Virginia Midland Railroad to Lynch-
burg. Norfolk & Western Railroad to
destination.
To resorts named in Group E.
Virginia Midland Railroad to Lynch-
burg. Norfolk & Western Railroad to near-
est station. Stage or hack to destination.
To resorts natned in Group K.
Virginia Midland Railroad lo Lynch-
burg. Norfolk & Western Railroad to
Bristol. East Tennessee, Virginia &
Georgia Railroad to Unaka. Western
North Carolina Railroad to destination.
From NEW^ YORK, PHILADEL-
PHIA and BALTIMORE, via
W^ashington.
Pennsylvania Railroad to Washington.
Thence to destination. (See routes from
Washington, via Virginia Midland Rail-
road and Lynchburg.)
From DANVILLE, Va., GREENS-
BORO, RALEIGH, via Greensboro,
SALISBURY, CHARLOTTE, Etc.,
via DANVILLE.
To resorts named in Group D.
Richmond & Danville Railroad to Dan-
ville. Virginia Midland Railroad to
Lynchburg. Norfolk & Western Rail-
road to destination.
134
To resorts named in Group E.
Richmond & Danville Railroad to Dan-
ville. Virginia Midland Railroad to Lynch-
burg. Norfolk & Western Railroad to near-
est station. Stag'e or hack to destination.
To resorts na7ned in Group F & G.
Richmond & Danville Railroad to Dan-
ville. Virginia Midland Railroad to
Lynchburg. Norfolk & Western Railroad
to Roanoke. Shenandoah Valley Rail-
road to destination.
To OLD POINT COMFORT, Va.
Richmond & Danville Railroad to
Burkeville. Norfolk & Western Railroad
to Norfolk. Bay Line Steamer to Old Point.
From CHATTANOOGA, DALTON,
CALERA, SELMA, CLEVELAND
and KNOXVILLE, and points on
line of E. T. V. & G. R.R.
To resorts named i?t Group A.
East Tennessee, Virginia & Georgia
Railroad to Bristol. Norfolk & Western
Railroad to Roanoke. Shenandoah Val-
ley to Waynesboro. Chesapeake & Ohio
to destination.
or
East Tenessee, Virginia «& Georgia
Railroad to Bristol. Norfolk & Western
Railroad to Lynchburg. Virginia Mid-
land Railroad to Charlottesville. Chesa-
peake & Ohio to destination.
To resorts na77ied in Group B.
East Tennessee, Virginia & Georgia
Railroad to Bristol. Norfolk & Western
Railroad to Roanoke. Shenandoah Val-
ley Railroad to Waynesboro. Chesapeake
& Ohio Railroad to nearest station. Stage
to destination.
or
East Tennessee, Virginia &l Georgia
Railroad to Bristol. Norfolk & Western
Railroad to Lynchburg. Virginia Midland
to Charlottesville. Chesapeake & Ohio
Railroad to nearest station. Stage or
hack to destination.
To resorts named in Group D.
East Tennessee, Virginia & Georgia
Railroad to Bristol. Norfolk & Western
Railroad to destination.
To resorts named in Group E.
East Tennessee, Virgina & Georgia
Railroad to Bristol. Norfolk & Western
Railroad to nearest station. Stage or
hack to destination.
To resorts nained in Group F.
East Tennessee, Virginia & Georgia
Railroad to Bristol. Norfolk & Western
Railroad to Roanoke. Shenandoah Val-
ley to destination.
To resorts najned in Group G.
East Tennessee, Virginia & Georgia
Railroad to Bristol. Norfolk & Western
Railroad to Roanoke. Shenandoah Valley
Railroad to nearest station. Stage or
hack to destination.
To resorts named in Group H.
East Tennessee, Virginia & Georgia
Railroad to Bristol. Norfolk & Western
Railroad to Roanoke. Shenandoah Val-
ley Railroad to Waynesboro. Chesapeake
& Ohio Railroad to Staunton. Valley
Branch Baltimore & Ohio Railroad to
nearest station. Stage or hack to desti-
nation.
or
East Tennessee, Virginia & Georgia
Railroad to Bristol. Norfolk & Western
Railroad to Lynchburg. Virginia Mid-
land Railroad to Charlottesville. Chesa-
peake & Ohio Railroad to Staunton.
Valley Branch, Baltimore & Ohio Rail-
road to nearest station. Stage or hack to
destination.
To OLD POINT COMFORT, Va.
East Tennessee, Virginia & Georgia
Railroad to Bristol. Norfolk & Western
Railroad to Norfolk. Bay Line Steamer
to Old Point.
To resorts named in Group J.
East Tennessee, Virginia & Georgia
Railroad to Bristol. Norfolk & Western
Railroad to Roanoke. Shenandoah Val-
ley Railroad to Hagerstown. Cumber-
land Valley Railroad to destination.
From NASHVILLE, Tenn., and line
of N. C. & St. L. R. R.
Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis
Railroad to Chattanooga. Thence to
destination as indicated in route from
Chattanooga.
From MERIDIAN, YORK, BIR-
MINGHAM and line of A. G.
S. R. R.
Alabama Great Southern Railroad to
Chattanooga. Thence to destination as
indicated in route from Chattanooga.
From ATLANTA, Ga.
Western & Atlantic Railroad to Dalton.
Thence to destination as indicated in
Routes from Dalton.
or
East Tennessee, Virginia & Georgia
Railroad to Cleveland. Thence to desti-
nation as indicated in routes from Cleve-
land.
From MACON, Ga., and South West-
ern Georgia points.
Central Railroad of Georgia to Atlanta.
Western & Atlantic Railroad to Dalton.
or
East Tennessee, Virginia & Georgia
Railroad to Cleveland, Tenn. Thence to
destination as indicated in routes from
Dalton and Cleveland.
From MONTGOMERY & OPELIKA,
via Atlanta.
Western Railroad of Alabama to West
Point. Atlanta & West Point Railroad
to Atlanta. Western & Atlantic Railroad
to Dalton.
or
Western Railroad of Alabama to West
Point. Atlanta & West Point Railroad to
125
Atlanta. East Tennessne, Virginia &
Georgia Railroad to Cleveland. Thence
to destination as indicated in routes from
Dal ton and Cleveland.
From NEW ORLEANS, MOBILE,
PENSACOLA and L. & N. R. R.
points, via Atlanta.
Louisville & Nashville Railroad to
Montgomery. Western Railroad of Ala-
bama to West Point. Atlanta &. West
Point Railroad to Atlanta. Western &
Atlantic Railroad to Dalton.
or
Louisville & Nashville Railroad to
Montgomery. Western Railroad of Ala-
bama to West Point. Atlanta & West
Point Railroad to Atlanta. East Ten-
nessee, Virginia & Georgia Railroad to
Cleveland. Thence to destination as in-
dicated in routes from Dalton and Cleve-
land.
From NEW ORLEANS, MOBILE,
PENSACOLA, MONTGOMERY,
and L. & N. R. R. points, via Calera.
Louisville & Nashville Railroad to
Calera, Ala. Thence to destination as
indicated in routes from Calera, Ala.
From NEW ORLEANS, VICKS-
BURG, JACKSON, via Grand
^Junction.
Illinois Central Railroad to Grand
Junction. Memphis & Charleston Rail-
road to Chattanooga. Thence to destina-
tion, as indicated in route from Chatta-
nooga.
In addition to the direct routes of travel
given in the foregoing Itinerary, which
are in all cases the same in each direction,
the entirely new feature in E.xcursion
Travel of
VARIABLE ROUTES,
by which tourists going from home by
one line may return by another, has been
arranged; this being by reason of the ex-
tensive mileage of the
Virginia, Tennessee & Georgia Air Line,
traversing large areas of diverse terri-
tory— an entirely practicable arrangement
within its own control.
These Variable Route Tickets embrace
all or portions only of the Scenic Attrac-
tions and Summer Resorts of the Line,
according to the taste, time and means
of intending tourists, and are obtainable
during the Excursion Season at the offices
of the Line, or initial companies at in-
terest, in the following cities:
Baltimore. — Western Maryland Rail-
road, Hillen Station, Fulton Station,
Pennsylvania Avenue Station, at 133 West
Baltimore Street. Geigan & Co., ticket
agents.
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, Camden
Station, and corner Baltimore & Calvert
Streets.
Baltimore Steam Packet Company, 157
West Baltimore Street. W. H.Fitzgerald,
agent.
Washington. — 507 Pennsylvania Ave.,
E. J. Lockwood, Passenger agent. Balti-
timore & Ohio Railroad, Depot ticket
office.
Virginia Midland Railroad ticket office,
601 Pennsylvania Avenue. N. McDaniel,
ticket agent.
Harrisburg.— Ticket office of Cumber-
land Valley Railroad.
Hagerstovvn.— Ticket office of Shen-
andoah Valley Railroad. Charles Feld-
man, ticket agent.
LuRAY. — Ticket office of Shenandoah
Valley Railroad. M. Spitler, ticket agent
Waynesboro.— Ticket office of Shenan-
doah Valley Railroad. B. L. Greider,
ticket agent.
Norfolk.— Under Atlantic Hotel. W.
T. Walke, ticket agent. Purcell House,
W. I. Flournoy, ticket agent.
At Depot Norfolk & Western Railroad.
J. F. Cecil, agent.
New York.— At office of the Line, 303
Broadway. H. V. Tompkins, agent.
Boston — At office of the Line, 290
Washington Street. C. P. Gaither, agent.
Lynchburg. — Norfolk & Western Rail-
road Depot ticket office. W. L. Rohr,
ticket agent.
Petersburg. — Norfolk & Western Rail-
road Depot ticket office. H. V. L. Bird,
agent.
Richmond.— At 1000 Main Street. A.
W. Garber & Co., ticket agents, 1206
Main Street. S. H. Bowman, agent,
R. & A. R. R.
Roanoke.— Norfolk & Western and
Shenandoah Valley Railroad Depot ticket
office. T. H. Bransford, agent.
Knoxville.— East Tennessee, Virginia
& Georgia Railroad Depot ticket office.
Chattanooga. — East Tennessee, Vir-
ginia & Georgia Railroad Depot ticket
office. J. H. Peebles, ticket agent.
Memphis. — Memphis & Charleston Rail-
road Depot ticket office. Also Main Street
ticket office. Barney Hughes, ticket agent.
Atlanta. — East Tennessee, Virginia &
Georgia Railroad Depot ticket office.
Jack W. Johnson, ticket agent.
Macon.— East Tennessee, Virginia &
Georgia Railroad Depot ticket office. R.
T. Reynolds, ticket agent. Also at 102
Mulberry Street. Burr Brown, ticket
agent.
Jacksonville. — Savannah, Florida &
Western Railroad ticket office, West Bay
Street. And office of the Line, corner Bay
and Hogan Streets. B. H. Hopkins, pas-
senger agent.
Selma.— East Tennessee, Virginia &
Georgia Railroad at Depot ticket office.
T. H. Lavender, ticket agent.
Meridian.— East Tennessee, Virginia
& Georgia Railroad at Depot ticket office.
C. Berney, ticket agent.
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